Sony caved and shut down ‘The Interview’ after North Korea’s criminal cyber-attack. Surprise, surprise, it was North Korea behind Sony’s hackign scandal after all. Is anyone at all surprised by this? You don’t mess with Kim Jong-un, is basically what Sony learned today. After the hackers threatened to blow up a series of movie chains in a 9/11 style attack, several theater chains [all the big ones including Regal, Cinemark, and AMC in the USA and Cineplex in Canada] pulled out of showing ‘The Interview.’ Sony was more or less driven into a corner, and pulled The Interview completely from distribution.
As of now, Sony have admitted that they have no plans to re-release The Interview via VOD or other distribution platforms. It’s likely that they can claim a full insurance loss if they don’t even attempt to release the movie, considering the circumstances. The fact that North Korea has managed to take down a significantly large corporation in the US should be worrisome for the government, honestly. This shows that their cyber warfare capacities are fairly advanced, and that should they choose to, they can target something bigger next time and much more important .
Sony did release a statement saying, “We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees, and the American public. We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.”
Again, many people are criticizing Sony for ‘giving in’ to pressure. Seth Rogen and James Franco remain defiant. Are we going to allow dictators to take our freedom from us like they do their own people’s?