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Top Five Theaters Won't Show "The Interview" Sony Cancels Release
tobiasly writes The country's top five theater chains — Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark, Carmike Cinemas and Cineplex Entertainment — have decided not to play Sony's The Interview. This comes after the group which carried off a massive breach of its networks threatened to carry out "9/11-style attacks" on theaters that showed the film. Update: Sony has announced that it has cancelled the planned December 25 theatrical release.
1/2 a dash of PR
1/2 a dash of bullshit (fresh)
Two sprigs of the Smith Mundut act repeal
1 whole FUD, chopped
1 government w/control issues
Mix ingredients in a large water cammode briskly then flush on to American public
Not sure why they truncated my submission but the questions this raises was more interesting to me than the news itself.
For posterity: What should Sony do? Cut their losses and shelve it? Release it immediately online? Does giving in mean "the terrorists have won"?
Sony should say screw you to North Korea and release the entire movie for free on the internet. Make sure everybody has a chance to see it. Of course they won't because they still have to monetize it somehow, but it would be something to say "we're not going to give in".
I read the internet for the articles.
Do we have reason to believe that this group is actually capable of or prepared to carry out the attacks that they're threatening? If theaters around the country showed the movie, can these terrorists bomb them all?
Or did all these companies simply buckle to a random threat without anything behind it? Because, yeah, I guess if someone calls in a bomb threat to the local high school, you might have to go evacuate the school while the police check it out, but you should have some plan for keeping the kids from calling in new threats every day and shutting the school down permanently.
A "real and present threat" on a specific mall is a very different thing from a random threat.
There are 5300 movie theaters in the USA. If half of them show the movie, that's 2650 showings. If the terrorists attack *ten* showings (likely an overestimate), that's still less than half a percent chance of being impacted.
I'd take those odds.
The alternative is that random groups start making threats against everything they don't like while carrying through on just enough of them to keep people scared, and the population lives in fear.
Well, SONY might not be as "All-American" as "Home of the Brave" implies.
But, while the terrorists have won, SONY could do their part to rob the terrorists of their victory. Since they have decided NOT to release the movie to theaters anyway, they could score a great public relations victory by giving away lots of free copies. Imagine free DVDs at lots of retailers and/or sent to anyone who signs up for a free DVD on a Sony website getting a copy in the mail, delivered by an agent of the U.S. Government. And, of course, free digital downloads for people who don't care about quality. And it would send a nice message to all munchkin dictators. Hack us because you don't like what we say, you don't get to silence us, you get us to send out our movie to even more viewers than would have seen it before.
Not that I expect Sony to do something that would have such a positive effect; I expect them to allow the terrorists to win and focus on making money. Just saying that it is what I would do if I ran Sony. I do not.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I work for a sizable sports network. Sony had a ton of inventory purchased across many networks to promote the release. They pulled ALL of it, ridiculously close to airtime. Way closer than we normally allow.
They were negotiating down to the wire to not have to cancel this movie. And why wouldn't they? They stand to lose tens of millions unless they're smart about how they do a private release now.
Trust me. Sony has released FAR shittier movies than this. This one had buzz going for it. Remember that months ago, NK declared it an act of war.
This looks completely legit. A ridiculously weak - and in my mind completely wrong - move, but legit.
Actually - not really, that statistic is simply based on crime numbers. More people are killed by spouse/partner than any other source. This is pretty much a global reality, the only significant exceptions are the middle of warzones.
The vast majority didn't make random choices, they just made WRONG choices.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *