The Sony Pictures hack took a turn for the very serious this week, with the studio outright cancelling the release of its upcoming movie The Interview following terrorist threats against cinemas showing it.
Financial analysts estimate that Sony will lose up to $75 million from the cancellation of the film, but things have escalated further still, with U.S. President Barack Obama addressing the incident at his end-of-year press conference.
The Sydney Morning Herald report that, after the FBI gave confirmation of North Korea’s involvement in the hack, Obama told reporters “we will respond, we will respond proportionally, and in a place and time that we choose.”
He also said that Sony made a mistake by not contacting him before pulling their release. “We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” he said.
“Because if somebody’s going to intimidate them for releasing a satirical movie, imagine what’s going to happen when there’s a documentary they don’t like,” he continued.
“Even worse, if producers and distributors start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody who frankly probably needs their sensibilities offended.”
As for what a “proportional” response might be, Obama said that he would not discuss this at the press conference.
In an open letter to Sony, Gawker offered to screen the movie in place of its cancelled New York premiere. BitTorrent have also stepped in and offered to help Sony release the film via paid torrent bundle.
Either way, The Interview has gone from ‘meh, maybe I’ll check it out’ to the must-see film of the year.
Photo: Alex Wong via Getty Images
