This was not the United States government negotiating and cowering to the demands of terrorists. This is a corporation making a business decision based on profits and losses. It still sucks and opens up the door for more stunts like this. I get the feeling that somewhere out there, there are a room full of 20-somethings high-fiving themselves -- be they Korean or not.
The stink is on the movie and it's spread to all other movies out at the same time. All it takes is one yahoo with a complex to do something and Sony would be crushed with lawsuits. As would the movie theaters.
blows but it's insane to cave. Even if it was going to bomb, you have to release it now. Just inviting trouble down the road for everybody if they get away with this.
Or the hacking would get worse, somehow.
We'd find out Hollywood blackballs via political beliefs and if you are not conforming to the agenda, you are not performing in the movie or music industry.
And we'd find out worse comments than the making of racial jokes about First Gentleman, or Jolie is a lousy actress.
And the new anti-Semitism, but this time with Jewish entertainers falling in line for the sake of their careers, and Benjamins.
NK might have some Manchurian candidates in the country
I'm all about the whole "not caving in to terrorism" thing, but this particular film isn't the example of freedom of expression to make a stand on. Regardless of the fact that it's a comedy, or whatever way the story concludes, the premise of the movie is purposefully inflammatory and in bad taste for a Hollywood production that has such a massive market.
RE: They don't need to wire all theaters or even one theater
The stink is on the movie and it's spread to all other movies out at the same time. All it takes is one yahoo with a complex to do something and Sony would be crushed with lawsuits. As would the movie theaters.
Blame our overly cautious litigious society.
Buford hits it exactly. It could even be some looney with an automatic weapon who has no connection to North Korea but is just set off by the publicity.
Anything happens and SONY is dogmeat.
You can only hope that something like this serves as a wakeup call about litigation. It is ruining education--that's for sure
I'm all about the whole "not caving in to terrorism" thing, but this particular film isn't the example of freedom of expression to make a stand on. Regardless of the fact that it's a comedy, or whatever way the story concludes, the premise of the movie is purposefully inflammatory and in bad taste for a Hollywood production that has such a massive market.
I disagree that it's purposefully inflammatory. It's a goof movie. There were serious movies made about Bush being assassinated and nobody threatened movie theaters.
I'm all about the whole "not caving in to terrorism" thing, but this particular film isn't the example of freedom of expression to make a stand on. Regardless of the fact that it's a comedy, or whatever way the story concludes, the premise of the movie is purposefully inflammatory and in bad taste for a Hollywood production that has such a massive market.
BFD. This is America, people have a right to say inflammatory things, and companies have a right to make and market inflammatory films. Whether it should have been greenlighted in the first place is another matter, but once it was canceling it sent the wrong message. And the Steve Carell movie wasn't slated to be satire, or didn't seem to be.
Stupid idea for a movie. This asshole in NK has been in the news for several years rattling swords towards the rest of the world.
The damage they did to Sony was pretty intense. It would be horrible for the company if somehow a threat got carried through or in our own country where too many horrific acts get committed by nutjobs, they used this movie as a catalyst to commit a horrific act.
And you guys call it an example of pussification of America? Can you overuse that saying any more than you do?
Who the hell cares if it's a stupid movie? How does that change anything? We see a million stupid ass movies released each year. This sets an awful precedence like others have said. Now NK will think they can get away with shit like this more often. They probably think they pulled one over on us too and now they're chest puffing over there. It's kind of sad on our end to know that they could ever do that in regards to our country. They weren't going to do shit. They never have and never will. All they do is talk and everyone laughs at them for it. Until now. They talked and the movie theaters and Sony cowered away. It's really pathetic that they could influence what happens here like that. And you know they won't be the last to try it. It's going to be sad seeing other counties making similar threats in the future if there's something they don't like.
It is as though no one realizes his last 2 movies were This is the End
And neighbors, easily 2 of the better comedies of the last 4 years. Of course it's a silly concept he makes raunchy R rated semi stoner flicks - he isn't exactly tackling serious topics. What a bunch of strange self righteous blow hards are on this site.
AMC and most of the other big theater chains dropped carrying it because they didn't want people to not go to the theaters on one of their biggest days of the year.
I am sure it will get released they just have to wait for the FBI to make a conconclusion or have it go straight to on demand.
Texas Theater Will Show Team America in The Interview's Place
As Sony's release of the North Koreamocking comedy The Interview falls apart in the face of terrorist threats, one movie theater has found a way to give Pyongyang the finger:
After Sony canceled the release of the North Korea assassination comedy The Interview, a Texas theater said it would swap the film with Paramount's 2004 film Team America: World Police for one free screening.
"We're just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation," James Wallace, creative manager and programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's Dallas/Fort Worth location, tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Really? North Korea? A country with absolutely no power projection and limited covert operations capabilities? All they have is cyber operations means (mainly in the form of hacking), but now that Sony knows to protect itself, I'm sure it's hired the best cyber security experts to prevent future attacks. So maybe they're more worried about more information being leaked instead of actual physical threat.
And neighbors, easily 2 of the better comedies of the last 4 years. Of course it's a silly concept he makes raunchy R rated semi stoner flicks - he isn't exactly tackling serious topics. What a bunch of strange self righteous blow hards are on this site.
Haha, I'm with you on that one. I don't really see what's bad about Seth Rogen movies go, as far as popular comedies with a wide audience. James Franco is in some good stuff as well.
For some reason people are acting like it's a mid 90s Jim Carrey movie.
Anyway, I think this is a perfect storm combination of a number of factors, but don't think North Korea's ability to pose any threat was one of them. To varying degrees:
1) that movie theaters refusing to show it anyway, since they felt it would keep people away from ALL movies/theaters in general
2) pressure from said movie theaters
3) spectre of releasing more and increasingly damaging emails as threatened. There was most likely some VERY damaging and disastrous emails that were threatened to be released.
4) chance of some whacko/mentally ill person actually uses this as an excuse to shoot up a theater anyway
5) pressure from people who thought there was a chance something may happen, however small that may actually be.
Featured Saddam Hussein as Satan's gay lover, and music from the movie was nominated for an Academy Award.
The key difference is that there was never the suggestion to assassinate or kill off Saddam Hussein in the South Park Movie. That's really the line that shouldn't be crossed even in comedy and satire.
As a matter of fact, this is very reminiscent of the episode of South Park that they were planning to have depict an animated version of the prophet Muhammad. A lot of Muslims were infuriated, and there were some terroristic threats against Comedy Central by extremists. South Park was forced to edit the final product dramatically because of it.
Even South Park, which is probably the most relentless source of satire in the mainstream, made the calculus that sticking to their guns on something like this just wasn't worth the backlash.
. . . actually I take that back about killing off people in satire.
I did find myself laughing quite a bit when South Park electrocuted George Zimmerman last season. In context it was funny, but I'm sure plenty of people were offended. There probably still should be a line drawn at assassination though.
that has apparently chained people to stakes and dropped mortars on them. I'm not terribly concerned that entertainment "crosses the line" by making light of Kim the Younger's life and death.
RE: . . . actually I take that back about killing off people in satire.
I did find myself laughing quite a bit when South Park electrocuted George Zimmerman last season. In context it was funny, but I'm sure plenty of people were offended. There probably still should be a line drawn at assassination though.
So satire about killing a sadistic and murderous dictator = in bad taste and not right
Satire about killing a man tried and found innocent = in bad taste but still funny
I'd assume that everyone here has laughed at a distasteful joke at some point in their life - the level of humor of the material is not the issue.
Btw, George Zimmerman wasn't actually "killed" per se in the South Park episode - he was sentenced to death by electrocution. I'm not going to try to explain the actual plot behind it, but I can guarantee that any depiction or suggestion of someone actually trying to assassinate Zimmerman, even a cartoon caricature of him, likely would have never aired.
There must be some real bad shit the hackers are holding
that many seem to be missing. Namely, that the current environment of massive, accelerating technological change carries with it risks that didn't exist even a few years ago, and that corporations (and others) have not yet figured out how to deal with. And, that these risks could continue to expand in ways that are difficult to impossible to predict in advance.
Entire industries are going to be devoted to dealing with accelerating cyber threats, and to creating the best possible barriers against them. It's really unfair to blame Sony because, after being the first in a likely long line of corporate-directed cyber-attacks, they may not have immediately determined the optimal response--if there even is an optimal response.
I believe that some day relatively soon, there will be much better defenses against hacking and other cyber attacks than currently exist. It's just a guess, though.
Plus, there is the threat against theaters playing the movie. Would you want to be the executive who gave the "full speed ahead" signal and then had even one serious incident occur?
And btw, this has nothing to do with the first amendment. It isn't about the making of a law. Self-censorship, for any reason, is constitutional--of course.
towards it if someone made a movie about assassinating President Obama?
Not a comedy by any means but in 2006 there was a movie that was set up to be a documentary that takes place in the future about the assassination of George W Bush. Death of a President - ( New Window )
BBI jumping to conclusions and referencing the pussification of America. News this morning reporting that NK got a ton of data from the hacks and some of it makes Sony look real bad apparently.
that many seem to be missing. Namely, that the current environment of massive, accelerating technological change carries with it risks that didn't exist even a few years ago, and that corporations (and others) have not yet figured out how to deal with. And, that these risks could continue to expand in ways that are difficult to impossible to predict in advance.
Entire industries are going to be devoted to dealing with accelerating cyber threats, and to creating the best possible barriers against them. It's really unfair to blame Sony because, after being the first in a likely long line of corporate-directed cyber-attacks, they may not have immediately determined the optimal response--if there even is an optimal response.
I believe that some day relatively soon, there will be much better defenses against hacking and other cyber attacks than currently exist. It's just a guess, though.
Plus, there is the threat against theaters playing the movie. Would you want to be the executive who gave the "full speed ahead" signal and then had even one serious incident occur?
And btw, this has nothing to do with the first amendment. It isn't about the making of a law. Self-censorship, for any reason, is constitutional--of course.
mg, you're very close in a lot of ways with this post, but there are a couple of adjustments needed.
First, Sony - it's easy to point to Sony as an early victim in this war that could not have avoided being hacked, but remember that they were hacked several times a few years ago (in a very public way, with customer data walking out the door and their own gaming network being taken down several times).
Instead of learning from that experience, Sony marched on - not only not bolstering it's cyber defenses, but making further cuts to an already stretched thin IT budget. This took taking down Sony from moderately difficult down to a walk in the park.
As for entire industries - they've already sprung up, and it's big business. You're already seeing a move in most security related functions from one of compliance to corporate policy to threat intelligence based defenses, trying to quickly adjust on the fly based on information seen in the wild or from the results of ongoing, massive analytic examination of a company's network traffic.
You're also seeing the first wave of "militarization", with former law enforcement and military cyber personnel moving into private sector roles. Former FBI, CIA, NSA high and mid level people moving into leadership roles in big banks, insurance companies, etc.
The problem - these are slow moving orgs, and budgets are a problem. And historically, despite the fact that budgets haven't been slashed with some others after the crisis in 08, they haven't grown in-line with the risks either. For most companies, the risk was worth the reward. For a company like Sony, the thinking was probably more often than not that even if someone did get in, what would they really take? Hell, I've been telling customers for years that corporate espionage should be a bigger concern - if I were an unscrupulous Hollywood competitor, you can bet I'd have contracted some hackers in Estonia to see what they could get out of high level Sony exec e-mails.
The Russians went after JPM. The North Koreans after Sony. It's widely believed that the Chinese were responsible for a bug on the SCADA system that caused the to malfunction, leading to the 2006 blackout. Who's next, Iran? It's only a matter of time. Countries that could never mount a military offensive due to limited resources can easily build a high functioning cyber warfare unit.
Their online service for Playstation has been hacked constantly. credit card info has been breached multiple times.
Yes - and after the last round, they called in a few experts, and they were told the same thing by multiple parties - they don't spend enough on security infrastructure and don't have enough headcount dedicated to it. What Sony did was basically wave it off, and go ahead and cut back further.
Shame on me, because I still bought a PS4 for my son anyway, but I'm really reluctant to go the online gaming route for that reason. That's a major leap of faith that neither my billing information would be compromised, or that a vulnerability in the PS4 couldn't lead to an internal breach of my own network by way of Sony's (which I offset by putting my gaming consoles in an isolated network segment off my own network).
Microsoft is certainly not perfect, but what they've done with live is solid. They are really dedicated to making sure hackers don't ruin the experience.
Quite a world we live in these days.
Link - ( New Window )
Blame our overly cautious litigious society.
40 year old virgin
Superbad
Knocked up
Forgetting sarah marshall
I love you man
Get him to the greek
Not cinema masterpieces, but better than sandler flicks.
We'd find out Hollywood blackballs via political beliefs and if you are not conforming to the agenda, you are not performing in the movie or music industry.
And we'd find out worse comments than the making of racial jokes about First Gentleman, or Jolie is a lousy actress.
And the new anti-Semitism, but this time with Jewish entertainers falling in line for the sake of their careers, and Benjamins.
Blame our overly cautious litigious society.
Buford hits it exactly. It could even be some looney with an automatic weapon who has no connection to North Korea but is just set off by the publicity.
Anything happens and SONY is dogmeat.
You can only hope that something like this serves as a wakeup call about litigation. It is ruining education--that's for sure
Isn't that technically the pussification of Japan, since it's Sony?
I disagree that it's purposefully inflammatory. It's a goof movie. There were serious movies made about Bush being assassinated and nobody threatened movie theaters.
BFD. This is America, people have a right to say inflammatory things, and companies have a right to make and market inflammatory films. Whether it should have been greenlighted in the first place is another matter, but once it was canceling it sent the wrong message. And the Steve Carell movie wasn't slated to be satire, or didn't seem to be.
Stupid idea for a movie. This asshole in NK has been in the news for several years rattling swords towards the rest of the world.
The damage they did to Sony was pretty intense. It would be horrible for the company if somehow a threat got carried through or in our own country where too many horrific acts get committed by nutjobs, they used this movie as a catalyst to commit a horrific act.
And you guys call it an example of pussification of America? Can you overuse that saying any more than you do?
Who the hell cares if it's a stupid movie? How does that change anything? We see a million stupid ass movies released each year. This sets an awful precedence like others have said. Now NK will think they can get away with shit like this more often. They probably think they pulled one over on us too and now they're chest puffing over there. It's kind of sad on our end to know that they could ever do that in regards to our country. They weren't going to do shit. They never have and never will. All they do is talk and everyone laughs at them for it. Until now. They talked and the movie theaters and Sony cowered away. It's really pathetic that they could influence what happens here like that. And you know they won't be the last to try it. It's going to be sad seeing other counties making similar threats in the future if there's something they don't like.
I am sure it will get released they just have to wait for the FBI to make a conconclusion or have it go straight to on demand.
#NorthKorea has provided a new gold standard for weakness in international politics: a state that feels threatened by a Seth Rogen movie
As Sony's release of the North Koreamocking comedy The Interview falls apart in the face of terrorist threats, one movie theater has found a way to give Pyongyang the finger:
After Sony canceled the release of the North Korea assassination comedy The Interview, a Texas theater said it would swap the film with Paramount's 2004 film Team America: World Police for one free screening.
"We're just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation," James Wallace, creative manager and programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's Dallas/Fort Worth location, tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Link - ( New Window )
Haha, I'm with you on that one. I don't really see what's bad about Seth Rogen movies go, as far as popular comedies with a wide audience. James Franco is in some good stuff as well.
For some reason people are acting like it's a mid 90s Jim Carrey movie.
Anyway, I think this is a perfect storm combination of a number of factors, but don't think North Korea's ability to pose any threat was one of them. To varying degrees:
1) that movie theaters refusing to show it anyway, since they felt it would keep people away from ALL movies/theaters in general
2) pressure from said movie theaters
3) spectre of releasing more and increasingly damaging emails as threatened. There was most likely some VERY damaging and disastrous emails that were threatened to be released.
4) chance of some whacko/mentally ill person actually uses this as an excuse to shoot up a theater anyway
5) pressure from people who thought there was a chance something may happen, however small that may actually be.
The key difference is that there was never the suggestion to assassinate or kill off Saddam Hussein in the South Park Movie. That's really the line that shouldn't be crossed even in comedy and satire.
As a matter of fact, this is very reminiscent of the episode of South Park that they were planning to have depict an animated version of the prophet Muhammad. A lot of Muslims were infuriated, and there were some terroristic threats against Comedy Central by extremists. South Park was forced to edit the final product dramatically because of it.
Even South Park, which is probably the most relentless source of satire in the mainstream, made the calculus that sticking to their guns on something like this just wasn't worth the backlash.
So satire about killing a sadistic and murderous dictator = in bad taste and not right
Satire about killing a man tried and found innocent = in bad taste but still funny
Gotcha.
Great post lol just a hilarious sentence to read aloud
Well, we'd hack them back, but seriously - who'd fucking know?
Btw, George Zimmerman wasn't actually "killed" per se in the South Park episode - he was sentenced to death by electrocution. I'm not going to try to explain the actual plot behind it, but I can guarantee that any depiction or suggestion of someone actually trying to assassinate Zimmerman, even a cartoon caricature of him, likely would have never aired.
Yeah...from the shit I've seen online, sadly many would welcome it. So what's your point?
Having studied that entire family along with NK history, the world would be far far better off if that entire line was eliminated swiftly.
You don't think there are parodies mocking President Obama out there? Or calls for his death?
Entire industries are going to be devoted to dealing with accelerating cyber threats, and to creating the best possible barriers against them. It's really unfair to blame Sony because, after being the first in a likely long line of corporate-directed cyber-attacks, they may not have immediately determined the optimal response--if there even is an optimal response.
I believe that some day relatively soon, there will be much better defenses against hacking and other cyber attacks than currently exist. It's just a guess, though.
Plus, there is the threat against theaters playing the movie. Would you want to be the executive who gave the "full speed ahead" signal and then had even one serious incident occur?
And btw, this has nothing to do with the first amendment. It isn't about the making of a law. Self-censorship, for any reason, is constitutional--of course.
Not a comedy by any means but in 2006 there was a movie that was set up to be a documentary that takes place in the future about the assassination of George W Bush.
Death of a President - ( New Window )
Then again, Sony is not a U.S. company. So we have no national control over our "art."
They are scrapping the movie
I thought that South Park made the bleeps and edits because Comedy Central asked them to, but I could be mistaken about how that all went down.
Entire industries are going to be devoted to dealing with accelerating cyber threats, and to creating the best possible barriers against them. It's really unfair to blame Sony because, after being the first in a likely long line of corporate-directed cyber-attacks, they may not have immediately determined the optimal response--if there even is an optimal response.
I believe that some day relatively soon, there will be much better defenses against hacking and other cyber attacks than currently exist. It's just a guess, though.
Plus, there is the threat against theaters playing the movie. Would you want to be the executive who gave the "full speed ahead" signal and then had even one serious incident occur?
And btw, this has nothing to do with the first amendment. It isn't about the making of a law. Self-censorship, for any reason, is constitutional--of course.
mg, you're very close in a lot of ways with this post, but there are a couple of adjustments needed.
First, Sony - it's easy to point to Sony as an early victim in this war that could not have avoided being hacked, but remember that they were hacked several times a few years ago (in a very public way, with customer data walking out the door and their own gaming network being taken down several times).
Instead of learning from that experience, Sony marched on - not only not bolstering it's cyber defenses, but making further cuts to an already stretched thin IT budget. This took taking down Sony from moderately difficult down to a walk in the park.
As for entire industries - they've already sprung up, and it's big business. You're already seeing a move in most security related functions from one of compliance to corporate policy to threat intelligence based defenses, trying to quickly adjust on the fly based on information seen in the wild or from the results of ongoing, massive analytic examination of a company's network traffic.
You're also seeing the first wave of "militarization", with former law enforcement and military cyber personnel moving into private sector roles. Former FBI, CIA, NSA high and mid level people moving into leadership roles in big banks, insurance companies, etc.
The problem - these are slow moving orgs, and budgets are a problem. And historically, despite the fact that budgets haven't been slashed with some others after the crisis in 08, they haven't grown in-line with the risks either. For most companies, the risk was worth the reward. For a company like Sony, the thinking was probably more often than not that even if someone did get in, what would they really take? Hell, I've been telling customers for years that corporate espionage should be a bigger concern - if I were an unscrupulous Hollywood competitor, you can bet I'd have contracted some hackers in Estonia to see what they could get out of high level Sony exec e-mails.
The Russians went after JPM. The North Koreans after Sony. It's widely believed that the Chinese were responsible for a bug on the SCADA system that caused the to malfunction, leading to the 2006 blackout. Who's next, Iran? It's only a matter of time. Countries that could never mount a military offensive due to limited resources can easily build a high functioning cyber warfare unit.
Then again, Sony is not a U.S. company. So we have no national control over our "art."
Sony Pictures is pretty much an autonomous company within the US.
Yes - and after the last round, they called in a few experts, and they were told the same thing by multiple parties - they don't spend enough on security infrastructure and don't have enough headcount dedicated to it. What Sony did was basically wave it off, and go ahead and cut back further.
Shame on me, because I still bought a PS4 for my son anyway, but I'm really reluctant to go the online gaming route for that reason. That's a major leap of faith that neither my billing information would be compromised, or that a vulnerability in the PS4 couldn't lead to an internal breach of my own network by way of Sony's (which I offset by putting my gaming consoles in an isolated network segment off my own network).