So a few weeks back, a group called Guardians of Peace (GOP) hacked many Sony servers and released many files, including emails between Sony Pictures executives and producers, salary information, unreleased movies, and thousands of Social Security numbers and medical records. God knows what else hasn't even surfaced yet. Roughly 100 terabytes of data was stolen. That's 100,000 gigabytes for the laymen. Sony's internal computers and network was crippled by this, without even mentioning all of the publicity damage.
Well, it's since come out that the Guardians of Peace are basically entirely proven to be a puppet group of the North Korean government. They'd been hinting at their outrage about a movie called The Interview, which is a comedy movie meant to be released on Christmas, starring and created by James Franco and Seth Rogan. The plot happens to be about these two dopey dudes being sent to North Korea by the American government with the mission of assassinating Kim Jong Un, North Korea's brutal despot dictator.
Yesterday, December 16th, the GOP threatened to attack the movie theaters that dare to show this movie with a $44,000,000 budget. Frankly, it's a big movie with big Hollywood stars, for a little perspective. Certainly not some small indie film without one of the bigger players in Hollywood behind it. In response, Franco and Rogan cancelled all press appearances to promote the movie.
Flash to today, December 17th - AMC, Regal Cinemas, Cineplex, Carmike, and Cinemark pulled the movie from being shown in their theaters. For more perspective, these five players control the majority of the theaters in the US. So that was a massive detriment to this film's chance at success.
And finally, the big news hit later today that Sony was cancelling the release of this major movie, period, including planned press screenings. They've given in to North Korea's threats, which experts have called idle and not worth worrying about. An untitled thriller which takes place in North Korea starring Steve Carrell has also been canned.
And just now, the US government has officially fingered North Korea in these events.
You can read a much more in-depth timeline of the events here.
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Personally, I think it's utterly insane. It's just so absurd that this is happening that I can barely summon the words to describe it. If these events were the plot of a James Franco and Seth Rogan comedy, it would be too unbelievable to even be funny. Maybe this could be the plot of a South Park episode. Pure satire come to life. I don't think the movie itself is very important, but the fact that it's a crazy over-the-top goofball slapstick comedy makes this whole thing so much more ridiculous.
North Korea attacking Sony Pictures, a Japanese company, is one thing, but the fact that they have threatened to attack and kill Americans in movie theaters for watching a comedy is an entirely separate, more important, issue in my opinion. I believe the US government will be releasing an official statement tomorrow and I'm very interested to hear what they'll be saying. I know the standard course of action is to completely ignore NK's posturing, but this just seems like a whole different level to me.
What do you guys think? Do you think it was right for the major theaters and consequently Sony Pictures to completely pull this movie and just give in to idle threats? Do you think they should have stuck to their guns and shown the movie? Do you think the White House/DOD leaned on Sony to make a decision?
Let's hear your opinions.
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Originally Posted by onthewall2983
