Sometimes, when the terrorists win, we ALL win:
LOS ANGELES — North America’s three largest multiplex chains – Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment and Cinemark — on Wednesday canceled bookings for “The Interview,” a crude comedy that had prompted a threat of terror against theaters.
Together with Carmike Cinemas, which decided not to play “The Interview” late Tuesday, the four exhibitors control more than 19,200 screens in the United States and Canada, ending any prospect of a serious theatrical release.
This sounds as driven by movie house legal team skittishness than any credible threat, but all’s well that ends well.
Open thread.
schrodinger's cat
Is there any actor more hyped than James Franco?
Hunter Gathers
I don’t know which is funnier:
The fact that Sony was hacked by a country that can’t even deliver electricity to a large swath of it’s own people, or that all this consternation was brought about by a Seth Rogan movie.
My Truth Hurts
Personally I think gloating over this and finding it funny is rather un American and cowardly. I mean, I get the joke but I also get that we just allowed a vicious dictatorship, or maybe even just pranksters posing as one, to censor content in this country. How far we have fallen. The last few weeks have been shameful and honestly more than I can take. I do not recognize this country.
different-church-lady
When it’s inevitably revealed that this was all a guerrilla marketing stunt to promote the film gone horribly wrong someone at Sony is going to feel miiiiiiighty foolish…
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: Is he hyped?
—
You know, the President of the United States has been killed on Doctor Who, twice, and yet our relations with England haven’t suffered. It’s not like this movie was going to hurt our relations with North Korea.
I think Sony hacked their own computers just so they wouldn’t have to show this movie.
Sifu Snafu
No matter how stupid the movie might be, I’m not getting how this is in any way, shape, or form a Good Thing. I haven’t really been following the news on this (other than knowing the general plot idea of said stupid movie), is there something I’m missing?
Lavocat
What a bunch of fucking pussies.
I had absolutely no plans to see this movie … until NOW.
Fuck w/ my right to see a shitty movie, will ya!?
Belafon
@My Truth Hurts: Do you not remember the Last Temptation of Christ?
ETA: Or even more recently, the movie about Charles Darwin?
wasabi gasp
@My Truth Hurts: Shut yer applepiehole.
Botsplainer
I’ve called it all along – Ishtar in East Asia. The casting and concept sucked, and after seeing the climactic death of Kim Il Sung, I know for sure it sucked.
mai naem mobile
I cant believe its North Korea. Kim Jung Ill is supposed to be a movie buff. 1/ I think hes smart enough to know that this would bring more attention to NK and not.in a good way and 2/Hes smart enough to know that its a stupid forgettable comedy.
different-church-lady
@Sifu Snafu:
Sense of sarcasm, perhaps?
The Other Bob
They just turned an average film into a classic. Every teabagger will see it now to piss off the commies.
raven
@My Truth Hurts: Yea we should kill SOME-GODDAMN-BODY!!
Botsplainer
When it does its release to DVD, it is going to make Spies Like Us look like Casablanca in comparison.
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: He is, not for his acting though but for being a Renaissance man. As an actor, he always manages to play himself, sort of like Matt Damon, in every single movie.
Your story about Sony and this movie sounds highly plausible and I am saying this having only seen the trailer.
Suffern ACE
@Sifu Snafu: I guess it’s only funny because the cabal of fat little drunks that runs North Korea makes our buffoons look good by comparison. This week, we’ve moved into third place in the race to see who has the biggest cabal of buffoons, behind North Korea and Pakistan. Yay US!
Patricia Kayden
@Belafon: HAHAHAHAHAHA!! I love your theory. Perhaps you’re right. The movie was probably going to bomb anyways so all this drama has served a positive purpose for Sony. Who knows?
Suffern ACE
@Botsplainer: He’s Dave Franco’s less attractive but funnier brother.
Chyron HR
A terrible tragedy for Seth Rogen fans*.
*If any.
mikefromArlington
No staging attacks in the us is not viable.
They must have hacked into some information that could cause the people that can make these decisions irreparable harm. Or at least cost more than the revenue this movie is projected to bring in.
Suffern ACE
Stolen from a smarter person than I in the other thread.
Randy Khan
Sony just cancelled the release, according to the local news radio station. Since there were no theaters to show it, I guess that made sense.
There is a real problem here – as someone said above, you can’t tell if the threat is real or not (although I suppose the NSA could figure it out) since a fake threat would look more or less the same as an actual one. I honestly don’t care about this one movie, but I do care about the fear that this stunt has generated within the film business.
brent
Movie didn’t look so great from the previews it but it seems extraordinarily weak to be intimidated into not showing it by some anonymous threats. On the other hand, I suppose its just a movie so its probably not worth the risk. Still, it doesn’t sit right to me that any kind of expression, even the lame Hollywood kind can be so easily muscled.
rusty
Nothing against the short-lived series Freaks & Geeks, but a reunion of Rogen & Franco was not something to look forward to, esp with Rogen at the creative helm.
catclub
@mikefromArlington: The Sony hack is apparently a VERY big deal. Complete devastation. I really had no idea. Of Course, their security team was laughable, but that may be the case with many US companies.
raven
zzzzzzzzzz
Patrick
@Hunter Gathers:
I don’t think they know it’s North Korea, do they?
American law enforcement is investigating any possible North Korea links, but so far hasn’t found evidence of one.
http://time.com/3637540/sony-hack-north-korea/
DTGstl314
@mai naem mobile: I don’t know if Kim Jung Il is a movie buff or not, but if he is, he’s a very deceased movie buff who presumably has no opinion one way or another about this film, since he died more than a year before The Interview even began filming.
I think you’re confusing him with his chubby little treasure troll son, Kim Jong-un, the boy tyrant that is the subject of mockery in the movie.
raven
@Patrick: They don’t know diddly shit.
LookingForACanadian
Hi Betty! Will be visiting your state later this month (secured airfare today). Do you know much about Orlando? I am looking for a decently priced hotel (around/under 200/nt), not too far from downtown/the Citrus Bowl, and with a pool by which to nurse the inevitable bowl game hangover for a day and a half or so. I realize there are gazillions, but if you have any favs or suggestions I’m all ears.
Schlemazel
What I wish would get released are the emails that show how this turd got approved in the first place. Hollywood is very good at greenlighting sophomoric garbage for tiny teens minds & this certainly looks like it qualifies but did nobody ask “why are we using a real live jerkoff dictator instead of a phoney everyone will know is KJI”?
Suffern ACE
@brent: I don’t know if what they did was so easy. I think the employees of Sony are going to be shitting bricks for awhile. Not just the executive. But anyone who has PII stored with that company.
Suffern ACE
@Schlemazel: They probably couldn’t write a fictional character who an audience would believe would be placed in charge of a country. No one would suspend their disbelief. Best to use the real thing
Woodrow/Asim
@raven: The link Patrick provided matches what I’ve been reading from multiple sources. Sony has been a cyber target for decades for various reasons, and my personal thought is that this is more coincidental than orchestrated by NK.
NK is a known center of cyber attacks (as odd as it sounds given the horrid infrastructure, as someone else has alluded to), but if it was directly attributal to them our Government wouldn’t be shy about saying so.
beltane
Newt Gingrich says this amounts to an act of war. Does this mean we will bomb North Korea over a Seth Rogan movie?
danielx
Have to admit, cancellation of that movie would seem to be something less than a tragedy, judging from the trailer I saw.
Sifu Snafu
@different-church-lady: The terrorists have succeeded…at turning me into a humorless douche.
skerry
At least we can now travel to Cuba to see “The Interview”
FlipYrWhig
@Suffern ACE: Seth Rogan did co-write Superbad, whose second lead character is named “Seth” and is played by Jonah Hill, so it’s entirely possible that coming up with imaginary characters isn’t his strong suit.
Schlemazel
@Suffern ACE:
I disagree, the majority of voters in the US even put a cartoon character in charge for real from 2000-2008. Sure, it lest some of us floating in a permanent suspension of disbelief many didn’t seem to think it was a problem.
NotMax
Frankly this smacks more of whichever concerns the theaters pay for insurance bringing the hammer down on the theater owners.
VOR
Zoolander had a plot about fashion models killing the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Per Wikipedia, the film has never shown in Malaysia and was banned in Singapore for several years. Perhaps Sony could compromise by promising not to release “The Interview” in North Korea.
KG
This is stupider than when Comedy Central got all chickenshit about an episode of South Park that showed a very non-offensive rendering of Mohammed and censored it.
Botsplainer
@Schlemazel:
Complete absence of perspective or judgment?
brent
@Suffern ACE: Well if I understand the article correctly, the theater chains’ decisions were based mostly upon a lot of non-specific threats from anonymous emails. Obviously not difficult to pull off. And Sony’s decision to cancel the release followed largely from the theater chains decisions. As I said, I can certainly understand the reaction – why risk actual customer’s lives over some crappy movie? – but its unfortunate to say the least. Its acquiescence to petty bullying when its all said and done and I hate that.
wasabi gasp
@raven: That above-it-all stuff got me jonesin’ for a doobie.
KG
@Botsplainer: Rogan was on Colbert the other night, Colbert asked him about using a different name, and Rogan basically said, “we thought about it, but we figured who’s feelings are we trying to protect?”
Schlemazel
@KG:
Sounds like te answer a 12 year old would give. Maybe he will have a better answer next movie.
Forked Tongue
Uh, I had no idea this movie even existed so I went and looked at the trailer.
Seriously? Those were the funniest moments they could pull out of the thing?
Suffern ACE
@beltane: Nothing actually would be funnier, if it weren’t for the massive loss of human life. I think Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan would be pissed if Seth Rogan actually ended the world, however.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
It’s an amusing theory, but they’re opening themselves up to a world of hurt if anyone can prove it. Failing to secure your employees’ personal information is a very serious mistake, but it’s something the company can plausibly defend in court. Deliberately publishing their personally identifying information on the web is not. If it ever comes out that Sony is behind this, they’ll be sued into bankruptcy, and rightly so.
Suffern ACE
@KG: Yep. Basically, the little dictator is now on the same level as the Prophet. Let that sink in for a moment.
zeecube
I was so looking forward to seeing a crude, stupid movie on Xmas with a buzz on. Now I will probably be forced to watch “Into the Woods”. Bummer.
Shalimar
@My Truth Hurts: We allowed? Who is we? The IT people working for Sony? How were “we” going to make sure every huge corporation in the US spends enough resources on cyber-security? Assuming it was North Korea, I would love to hear your suggestions about how to change this embarrassing, horrible situation.
Suffern ACE
I guess I’m the only guy who liked “This is the End”, “Superbad” and “50-50.” Gosh, folks around this place are too cool for their own good.
schrodinger's cat
@Suffern ACE:I have never even heard of them, what are they, movies?
Roger Moore
@beltane:
Why don’t we shoot Newt Gingrich instead?
FlipYrWhig
@Suffern ACE: Superbad I like. Don’t know the others. This Is The End looked like a steaming pile, as did Zach and Miri, although I don’t know if he wrote that one or just acted in it.
Betty Cracker
@LookingForACanadian: I hardly ever get to Orlando, but I know the Florida Hotel is a pretty good bargain and fits the bill as far as location and amenities go — more downtown than theme park. There are tons of hotels around the theme parks, but you’re better off looking downtown if you don’t want to be overrun with squealing kiddies and crabby parents while nursing a hangover. Have fun! Hopefully the weather will remain lovely for you!
beltane
Oooh La La, Jeb Bush has been forced to deny he is having an affair: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121679&page=1#.VJIGoNlGnbw.twitter
Schlemazel
Off thread but I found this interesting. I ordered a couple of gifts from Amazon for shipping to Colorado, the package was shipped FedEX on the 13th and is supposed to be delivered tomorrow. A couple of days later I ordered a second set of gifts from Amazon that got shipped from the same city as the first package on the 15th by USPS. That package was delivered today. The old, outmoded, inefficient Postal Service delivered the same sized box from from and to the same cities 3 days faster than the sooper-dooper cutting edge FedEx. Oh, and today FedEx just handed the package to USPS for delivery.
beltane
@Roger Moore: At the very least, the North Koreans could bully him into silence. This just shows what a terrible regime they have.
EthylEster
@Schlemazel: Someone ask Rogan that. His response: no one thought anyone would care. So…no one could have predicted…..
Botsplainer
@FlipYrWhig:
I liked everybody in it except for Rogen, who always only does one part in any movie – awkward.
EthylEster
@Suffern ACE: it’s a fucking rogan movie. suspension of disbelief is not part of his movie making strategy.
KG
@Suffern ACE: it’s not even that they are on the same level, it’s that we are deciding as a society that we will change what we would normally do (or what we’ve done in the past) because someone threatened us. it’s just another reminder that the terrorists won.
@Suffern ACE: I liked Super Bad, didn’t see This is the End or 50-50.
Mike J
I think Rogan is capable of being funny, but his last few movies were more focused on being edgy than on being funny. Edgy can be funny, but it’s like he doesn’t even care about funny any more.
dedc79
We don’t always get to pick the best test cases. In fact, more often than not we end up protecting the rights of people to say/produce/sell stupid/crude things in the hope that other people will take advantage of that same freedom to say/produce/sell smart and provocative things. The perceived quality of the movie (and it sure looks awful) shouldn’t really enter into the discussion at all.
beltane
Drats, that thing about Jeb having an affair is old. I was hoping for some drama and excitement from the Clown Car.
Botsplainer
@beltane:
If you don’t loudly announce your intent to forgive him even if it is true, then you are persecuting Christians for their kind, forgiving, generous behavior.
Schlemazel
@Roger Moore: COULD THAT BE ARRANGED? Then at least there would be some good to come out of this shitshow
EthylEster
@Schlemazel: he is very like a 12 year old child. have you seen any of his movies?
EthylEster
@Roger Moore: the hackers have been releasing emails from sony executives. and evidently the virus (or whatever) is successfully wiping sony drives. the company is rumored to be quite panicked about the email release…wherein the higher ups demonstrate repeatedly what clueless jerks they are. the movie is of secondary importance now.
Roger Moore
@Schlemazel:
Thanks for volunteering.
Violet
Didn’t Kim Jong Ill get killed in “Team America”? Well, okay, he turned out to be an alien, but he did get impaled. They didn’t pull any punches in that movie.
Schlemazel
@dedc79:
Thats true and a fair complaint that I won’t disagree with. OTOH if there was some actual artistic reason it had to be Kim Jung Un it would be a lot easier to draw a battle line. The fact it looks dreadful is only one count, the second count is that it is an unnecessary choice for no real artistic reason. I would almost bet he was hoping for some complaints to hype the movie. I can be appalled by the censorship while at the same time thinking the who affair is pointless and could easily been avoided had they decided to enter North Kamchatka to assassinate Kan Jam On.
Tree With Water
The boneless wonders of the world strike yet again. It’s amazing that people that chicken-shit decided to go into business in the first place.
gelfling545
Apparently Cuomo has banned fracking in NY. Not a complete waste of space then, I guess.
Schlemazel
@EthylEster:
Yes I have & that is why I made the comment. He has some funny stuff but mostly it is what Hollywood does these days, films for 12 year old boys.
cckids
@My Truth Hurts: The government of the USA didn’t censor or prohibit any companies from showing this movie. Private corporations looked at the risk vs profit involved & said “no thanks”. Lots of movies get made & not released.
What exactly should the “country” do? Set up showings on the National Mall?
Schlemazel
@Violet:
Yes but it was not the whole point of the movie & was not hyped as the point of the whole movie for months in advance. Daddy may have been displeased but it was too late by the time he was unhappy to set up an operation like the one that took Sony. Heck, maybe it was Team America that made the NKs set up this operation, just for next time. But my guess is that the months of hawking this fido gave KJU the lead time he needed.
dedc79
@Schlemazel: I would’ve gone with K. Jong-Un. No wait, that’s too obvious. Kim J.
Schlemazel
@cckids: BEam it against the moon with laser projectors so the whole world has to see it!
SO far I have not seen anyone play the 1st amendment card but then I don’t plumb the depths of wingnutistan. I am sure this is all BHOs fault somehow.
beltane
The late Qaddafi probably would have loved to have been portrayed in a big budget Hollywood film. KJU should realize that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
lamh36
I’m more convinced that other movie houses were pissed at SONY because if say they did show the film then prole room this threat seriously and stayed away from any theatre that showed the movie then some pretty good movies would be shit out of luck.
If no one goes to the move is no one sees anything amd therefore no one makes money other than SONY I guess since maybe prole would see it as some sort of protest screening or to see what all the hype was about.
This way SONY pulls it they still crate instant buzz for it but the industry doesn’t lose the big holiday box office that sone use to recoup yearly losses.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Completely unfounded and pulled out of my ass speculation here, but there are a whole lot of out of work VFX (digital visual effects) people with computer skills and a grudge against the studios for exploiting them and driving places like Rhythm and Hues into bankruptcy.
Just a thought.
EthylEster
From a hacked email:
Those picture folks are so detail oriented.
Schlemazel
@dedc79:
Given Rogens level of comedy his first try would have been something along the line of Ching Chong Guy. Then, after it was explained to him why that was a bad idea he would have gone with Long Duk Dong. In fact maybe this is exactly what happened & finally Sony said “Fuck it! Just go with Kim Jong Un.”
Violet
This is the kind of movie I’d watch on a plane. Kind of dumb, a few laughs, fast paced enough to keep moving along, doesn’t matter if you can’t see it all that well on the tiny screen. It’s fluff and generally kind of stupid. Just where my brain is on an international flight when I’m dealing with jetlag. There’s a place for movies like this.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): You may be onto something. Some experts are saying it’s almost certainly an inside job — not necessarily by a person currently at Sony but by someone who was fired or put out of business by it.
As for the crap movie and overcoming “censorship,” they should release it online. Free. Far more people would see it than would ever have paid for the dubious privilege.
Roger Moore
@EthylEster:
I can theoretically imagine Sony executives releasing their own emails if they thought that it would help them out in some way. After all, they aren’t going to sue themselves if somebody figures it out, though it would presumably mean the end of their career. I have a very hard time imagining them doing the kind of mass data dump of their employees’ sensitive information that has actually happened, because the consequences- both to the company and to the executives who decided on it- of leaking the SSN of every employee are just to dire to contemplate.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
I just did a quick Google and Sony announced in May that they’re closing down their US VFX facility (Sony Imageworks) and moving operations up to Canada.
Like I said, I’m basing this on no facts whatsoever, but I would not be surprised. I think that what triggered the thought was the release of the emails discussing Obama’s visit to Dreamworks. There was a big VFX protest outside Dreamworks during his visit.
cckids
@Schlemazel:
Yep. I’ve ordered stuff from Amazon in the morning & had it show up via USPS THE SAME DAY, after 5:00. FedEx, took 2-3 days.
NotMax
Had never heard of Seth Rogen before this, and the comments on this thread about his ‘acting’ make me long for that condition to still be the case.
@schrodinger’s cat
Pia Zadora?
William Shatner?
Owen Wilson?
CONGRATULATIONS!
There are a lot of folks out there with motivation and means to ruin Sony – and they have, they’re not even close to done with them yet.
North Korea is probably about #20 or so in line.
Of course, here’s the real problem. As the flag-waving shitdick above said, it’s actually not OK that somebody got strongarmed out of releasing this movie, but that’s really the least of all problems. The degree of infiltration of Sony that has been released to the public is massive. Looks like they’ve been more or less 100% compromised. Now, it’s Sony, promulgator of Adam Sandler films and shitty music, so in the grand scheme of things what’s happened to them kind of doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to die from it.
If CAISO, to use an example, could be compromised to that extent (and they have a lot less money to spend on security than Sony does) someone could just decide to turn the lights off on the West Coast. For weeks if not months.
People would die from that.
kindness
Insipid????
I’m looking forward to seeing that movie. It looks really funny.
Roger Moore
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
My understanding is that Sony has been exceptionally cavalier about their data security. I saw some kind of quote from their head of IT that treated the cost of repairing a breach as the primary consequence of bad security and seeing spending much money on security as a waste of money for that reason. They are now learning that other bad consequences are much more severe. CAISO understands the cost of downtime, and I expect their IT department to see security as part of protecting reliability, i.e. a critical task.
D58826
@Roger Moore: Why don’t we shot newt at kim.? kill two birds with one stone as it were
Sifu Snafu
@Schlemazel: If you don’t like Seth Rogen’s work in general, I can understand, but why casually suggest he’s a racist?
Betty Cracker
Now the teebee is telling me the gubmit says it WAS North Korean hackers.
Hoot
@mai naem mobile: The only movie Kim Jung Il is watching these days is a continuous loop of Gigli at Satan’s Cinema.
yopd1
Best response would be to make some Kim Jong Un lookalike the South Park Kenny of Hollywood and kill him off gratuitously in as many films as possible.
kc
@Sifu Snafu:
Was wondering that myself.
EthylEster
@Betty Cracker: I actually heard that on my way to work this am (some korean lang in code) and was puzzled by folks here claiming no evidence of Norks.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@My Truth Hurts:
I hope you don’t feel like I’m censoring your content, but STFU.
EthylEster
@Roger Moore: I agree. But several people here are absolutely certain that this is a Sony PR move. They don’t seem to realize that this is NOT primarily about when/if the movie screens. SONY (its rep and its businesses) could be damaged for a long time.
VFX Lurker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Couple thoughts:
– all the VFX artists I know who ever worked for Sony are frantically locking down against identity theft right now. I myself have not worked for Sony since 2004, so I’m not sure whether my own information got posted online or not. Given the pain this has caused the VFX community, I doubt a VFX artist did this, myself.
– It is true that Sony has relocated as much of its Los Angeles crew to Vancouver as it could in order to grab as much of Vancouver’s taxpayer dollars as possible. However, Sony’s not the only studio doing this — all the major clients (Disney, Paramount, Universal, etc) have decreed that VFX work for feature films must be physically done in subsidized locations in order for VFX shops to get a bid. However, no other VFX shop or client has as yet been attacked in this way.
– it could be a disgruntled ex-employee, but I’m thinking more along the lines of the IT folks that Sony recently laid off.
– we’ll probably find out exactly who did it sometime next year.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@VFX Lurker:
You are the person I was hoping would chime in — thanks! I do still wonder if the NK connections they’ve found are manufactured, but I guess we’ll find out.
Wally Ballou
@beltane: I’m trying to remember, but wasn’t he one of the guys who Leslie Nielsen beat the shit out of in the opening to The Naked Gun?
Tree With Water
@Betty Cracker: What is your favorite part of Florida to visit? My choice out here in California is the Tahoe region and points just north of there.
Mike in NC
@Wally Ballou: Yes, along with Arafat and Gorbachev.
I saw the theatrical trailer to “The Interview” and it was appalling terrible. Made the average Adam Sandler flick look like “Citizen Kane”.
Terry
The idea that anyone is discussing the imagined quality of this movie at all is morally repulsive. This is terrorism, folks, and if you can’t get behind franco and Rogen and demand that this movie be shown, then you are all seriously skewed in the right/wrong department. Oh, and for the record, the comics of this world are about twenty times smarter than the pretentious and quickly forgotten “artists” who clutter the culture with crap every year.
gwangung
I’m sad only in that I know Randall Park (Kim Jun Un) slightly and have worked extensively with the female lead (Diana Bang), who is a funny, funny improver who can hang with the best of them. This could have been a break for her.
I sadder in that I fully expect some wing nuts and Tea Partiers to imitate this with films they dislike….
LookingForACanadian
@Betty Cracker: Thank you!
Betty Cracker
@Tree With Water: Impossible to choose just one! I love the springs and spring-fed rivers, including the Ichetucknee River. Love the dark and mysterious Suwannee River. Love the austere beauty of the salt marshes along the Nature Coast. I am also very fond of the Upper and Middle Keys.
I’ve been to California, but sadly, I did not make it to Tahoe. I drove the Pacific Coast Highway from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco, and it was breathtakingly beautiful.
Craig
@My Truth Hurts:
Personally I think gloating over this and finding it funny is rather un American and cowardly. …We just allowed a vicious dictatorship … to censor content in this country.
Who’s we? I didn’t allow a dictatorship to censor content in this country. Sony and the movie distributers did. Their call. Their loss of $$.