Did you know Sony Pictures was Hacked?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past month, you know that Sony Pictures was hacked, not just a little . . . They were hacked a lot! Now as a movie goer, blogger, and hacking nut, I was not surprised that Sony got hacked. Companies get hacked all the time; heck, the US Government gets hacked a lot too. But the Sony hacking was much more than meets the eye.

The movie

On December 17^th, Sony made the executive decision to pull the new Seth Rogen movie “The Interview” from theaters before its debut.  “The Interview” is a comedy about a famous reporter who interviews famous people and has heart-to-heart conversations with them about pressing issues, think like an Oprah type of person. In the movie, the US Government hires Rogen’s character to go to North Korea and assassinate their President. Rogen’s character is shocked by the proposed interview and then through a lot of slap-stick comedy, he is trained on how to follow through on the assassination.

Now, have you ever seen a Seth Rogen movie?

Rogen’s has stared in many comedy movies over the past decade plus. These movies include; “Pineapple Express,” “Superbad,” “Knocked Up,” “Neighbors,” and many more. Knowing that Rogen is a comedian with a long list of funny parts in movies “The Interview” not only starred but was co-directed by the man which means it has a good shot at being pretty hilarious. Now was the topic of this movie done with the best timing and taste? Maybe not. Things heated up over the summer of 2014 between North Korea and the United States, and North Korea was deemed a serious threat by President Obama.

The threat

Days before the release of “The Interview,” there were threats made on US movie theaters claiming there would be repercussions that mirrored 9/11. That was more than enough to make many movie theater chains across the US say they were not going to show the film on their screens. Sony pictures even eventually pulled the plug on the movie.   

The move by Sony Pictures was one that was not greeted with open arms by many. The New York Times reported:

 “The notion that Sony and the theaters are going to react by caving on this film — a comedy — is ridiculous,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who was President George W. Bush’s counterterrorism adviser. “This is a horrible precedent,” Ms. Townsend added.

Conspiracy Theory

There are those who believe this is all a big publicity stunt that is all planned by Sony Pictures. The Belfast Telegraph wrote an interesting article, “The Interview: Is this the greatest publicity stunt in the history of the movies?” The article goes on to question the whole incident between Sony Pictures, the North Korean Government, and the terrorist threats. I am always a fan of conspiracy theory’s, but this one seems like it might be a real stretch; there was a lot of information exposed beyond just the movie being leaked and effectively canceled from being released.   

If you Google, like I just did “North Korea US July 2014” you will likely find the first link that I just ran into: “World War III (North Korea) – Future.” This article is on a site called “Future Wikia” and basically maps out a whole war with timelines, it is all in theory of course.

Sony fallout and bringing it full circle

Beyond the fallout of withholding a movie, which was later released in select theaters and also online, there was more backlash. Personal emails about Adam Sandler movies, Angelina Jolie, and many other actors were all exposed and left Sony pictures feeling quite violated. There were rumors that Sony even stopped using email to communicate for a short time and reverted to making phone calls and sending a fax instead.

Sony is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and think about how close that is to North Korea… Super close, so this comes much closer to home than we could possibly imagine while sitting here in the United States.