Pirates are getting an early Christmas present as high-quality copies of “40 of the hottest movie titles this year” are being leaked on torrent sites.

As first reported by TorrentFreak, The Hateful Eight, The Revenant and Joy screeners were leaked online before their theatrical release.

Joy has been nominated for two Golden Globes and a total of eight award nominations.

The Revenant has so far won eight awards with a total of 65 nominations which include four Golden Globes.

The Hateful Eight has won six awards with a total of 30 nominations, three of which are for Golden Globes.

Hive-CM8 to leak 40 of the hottest movie titles

One of the groups behind the leaks is Hive-CM8. The group noted The Hateful Eight as being “DVDScreener 1 of 40,” before promising to “do them all one after each other.” The group said it “started with the hottest title of this year,” and “the rest will follow.”

Hive-CM8, which claims it is “doing it right the first time,” has so far released:

The Hateful Eight: “DVDScreener 1 of 40.”

Creed, which is noted as “DVDScreener 2 of 40” for being the second hottest title.

Legend is “3 of 40” for being the third hottest title released.

In the Heart of the Sea is “4 of 40.”

Joy is DVDScreener “5 of 40.”

Steve Jobs is “6 of 40.”

The “piracy bonanza” is not actually a holiday present, according to Business Insider; it’s more about the upcoming awards season as the films are the best films of the year which are sent to judges for the Oscars, BAFTAs, the Golden Globes and other award shows.

“Every year so-called ‘screener’ copies of the most critically acclaimed films are ‘securely’ sent out for review but with few exceptions these movies leak to the Internet,” explained TorrentFreak. “This grants pirates the ability to watch big titles in a quality rarely experienced for such early releases.”

Hive-CM8 has removed all digital watermarks and the quality was called “extremely good;” TorrentFreak added that Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, which will have its cinema debut on December 25, “is now being guzzled up by excited Internet users around the globe,” already reaching 220,000 downloads before TorrentFreak published. The DVD screener for The Revenant had reached 300,000 downloads and the movie doesn’t hit theaters until Christmas day. Joy, another film slated for a Dec. 25 release, is also being downloaded with glee.

The movies being downloaded before their cinema debuts can almost make a person picture a furious MPAA executive yelling so hard as to be spitting on his computer screen. The MPAA was worked up when high-quality copies of Expendables 3 leaked online last year; although screeners being leaked online is not unique to this batch of big titles, TorrentFreak noted that this leaking of AAA titles “are likely to stir up anti-piracy sentiment in Hollywood like never before.”

It might also be worth noting that movie director Lexi Alexander previously claimed the MPAA's anti-piracy are bogus as “Piracy has NOT been proven to hurt box-office numbers, on the contrary, several studies say it may have boosted the bottom line,

Kickass Torrents launched release group KATRG

In other pirating news, TorrentFreak reported that KickassTorrents, listed at the top of the most popular torrent sites, has launched its own release group called KATRG. TorrentFreak noted, “that KATRG is not the original source of any of the titles uploaded so far. Instead, the group re-encodes Scene releases.” Besides The Revenant, The Hateful Eight, Legend, Creed, In the Heart of the Sea and Steve Jobs, additional titles listed among the films KATRG leaked include The Peanuts Movie, Brooklyn, Room and more, totaling 26 releases made up of Blu-ray and web rips as well as the latest Oscar DVD screeners leaked so far.

If you are a pirate then it likely does not matter what holiday you celebrate this month to view these high-quality releases as “gifts.”