America rallies around The Interview as BitTorrent, George R. R. Martin enter fray
Now that the FBI has weighed in on the hacking debacle that led to Sony’s decision to cancel its release of The Interview, you might think that this story has come to its logical end. You would be incorrect, however, as Sony and the White House are currently engaged in a game of “he said/she said” over President Obama’s statement that Sony made “a mistake” pulling the film. Obama has gone on to call the hack “cyber-vandalism” rather than an act of war, quieting fears/Twitter jokes that World War 3 would be started over a James Franco movie.
Meanwhile, the massive amounts of free publicity generated by the story have translated into a perfect 10 rating for The Interview on IMDB—since bumped down to a 9.9 by North Korean spies or whatever—presumably by patriotic Americans who want to stick it to Kim Jong-un and are willing to create an IMDB account to prove it. This is in lieu of writing “FUCK YOU KIM JONG-UN!” on The Interview’s Facebook wall, as Sony quietly pulled all social media accounts related to the movie over the weekend. Either way, Kim won’t be able to cry into his tiger’s fur over the spite rating for a while, as The New York Times reports that North Korea’s Internet went completely dark earlier today.
Anyway, it’s not just a major multinational corporation and the American government that are involved with this story. The Republican National Committee has officially called upon theater chains to play the movie, which might not be possible unless Sony and the theater owners can work through their hurt feelings about how this whole thing went down in corporate therapy. In the absence of a theatrical release, BitTorrent has offered to distribute The Interview using its (paid) BitTorrent Bundle service. (In an interview on Meet The Press Sunday, Sony lawyer David Boies said the company plans on distributing The Interview in some capacity, contradicting earlier statements that the movie is completely dead.) And not only bit players from the film but North Korea itself are looking to extend their 15 minutes, with North Korea threatening “serious consequences” if the U.S. does not join it in a joint investigation of the hack.
With this story growing more complex all the time, you may say, shaking your head as you do so, that “only Olivia Pope could clean this one up.” To which we say—it’s funny you brought that up, actually, because Sony has apparently hired the inspiration for Kerry Washington’s character, crisis management expert Judy Smith, to advise Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal on what to do next. Surely she can figure out how to end this thing, perhaps by taking up George R. R. Martin’s offer to screen The Interview at his theater in New Mexico and inviting Kim Jong-un to the screening. You know, because he likes to kill off main characters and stuff.