The Interview Movie

We’re pretty sure that only Sony could spend approximately $40 million on a movie that has to be scrapped a week before release because of intensifying threats. The firm announced yesterday that it’s ditching all 25th December release plans for its latest flick The Interview, after a hacking group named the Guardians of Peace threatened a 9/11-esque attack on American theatres.

The picture itself – which stars Seth Rogan and James Franco in the lead roles – is a comedy involving a fictional plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The decision follows a cyber attack on Sony Pictures, which has seen dozens of confidential emails, data, and scripts leaked to the media. According to quotes by anonymous US officials, the FBI has linked the aforementioned nation to the hack.

Earlier in the week, the company gave theatres the option to run the movie, with all of the biggest chains pulling out. This has resulted in the cancellation of the film, with a spokesperson telling the BBC earlier today that it has no plans to release the movie – not even through on-demand platforms like Netflix. Fortunately, the firm’s stocks have held fairly strong, dropping just 5 per cent since the hack.

In a statement, the company said that it was “deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie”, but that it “respects and understands” the decision of its partners to not show the film. "We stand by our film makers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome,” the organisation’s official comment on the matter concluded.

This is quite an incredible turn of events, and has naturally sparked a great deal of discussion around the web. We can’t comment on the content of the movie because we haven’t seen it, but it’s extraordinary to us that the balance of power has swung so much in recent years that hackers now have the ability to shut down $40 million projects with ease – simply because they don’t like them.

[source bbc.co.uk]