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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.
Uh huh...
Terrorists seem to win over and over.
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Now every terrorist organization around the world will see how easy it is to control North American media.
Well, I'm boycotting any theatre that isn't showing this movie because of a terrorist threat. If they don't want to show it because it's crap, that's fine with me.. But not because of some threat.
"we do not negotiate with terrorists."?
Dude, you don't understand. This is like acknowledging your stalker. It will never stop now.
I can easily see how to capitalize on this by releasing it via pay per view/on-demand or other services (assuming, of course, these providers can do a better job at protecting their servers than Sony did in the first place). Who says you have to sit in a physical movie theater with a bunch of strangers that you don't talk to in order to enjoy this movie?
The last time I wrote code, it was Morse
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"?
All they've done is taught attackers that they can force our media around.
Really disappointed in everyone involved here. Especially the cinemas. At least Sony *was* going to follow through.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I couldn't have cared less about the movie. It didn't really sound like my kind of humor.
But after the threat was made, I was planning on seeing it just to show the (newly become) terrorists what I think of them.
I'd have liked this to be Sony's most successful release of the year.
I'm getting mixed messages from the news, though. Has the release been completely scrubbed, or are they just canceling the formal premier?
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Now that Sony has cancelled the premier, if I want to see this movie I'll have to find a pirated copy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As an American, when did Americans become such fucking pussies?
Are we backing Sony at the moment?
Summation 2
They should be advertising the sht out of this movie as the film that terrorists are afraid of, including funny made up quotes from bogus North Korean hackers and party officials, etc.
They should be running to the fire on this, not away. It could send a message and increase their sales at the same time. The ONLY people in the whole world who really care about this two-bit movie are the North Koreans. They're not going to pull off any real terrorist attacks. Their hack of Sony was impressive, and I can understand the studios being wary of that, but really, some consulting dollars could mitigate a lot of that risk. Run a security blitz at the studios and poke NK in the eye. It's what they deserve.
I don't know what this movie is, and I don't follow or watch movies in general, but I suddenly almost want to find out more about this movie is all about now.
Almost.
It's pretty transparent that these hackers are North Korean. Fuck North Korea.
On the other hand, fuck Sony. I can't say that enough - FUCK SONY.
This doesn't help NK in any way. Oh, this movie is blasphemous to their state-mandated religion, worshipping the rotting corpse of Kim I and Kim II? This movie was never going to be seen by anyone in that entire country, if for the simple reason that so few of them can even afford it. I doubt they can even use this hack as internal propaganda, because the simple fact that such a movie exists shows how little the outside world cares about North Korea. And nobody's fooled by their disavowal - this is just more proof that they're a bunch of thugs.
This hurts Sony. First the humiliation of the hack. Then the financial damage. Then the humiliation of acceding to terrorist demands. They may have had a bad reputation in our circles for years now, but they've now lost face in the mainstream media, too.
So yeah, our enemies are fighting and both of them are losing. Time to break out the popcorn.
I was planning to go see this, not that I'm interested in the movie, but to show that I won't kow-tow to terrorists and extortionists. But since Sony has caved by deferring its release, Sony has joined the ranks of the chicken-droppings.
Several sites have called for Sony to release this on the Internet, and that's what I think they should do. And someone needs to make "we don't negotiate with Young Weasel" stickers with Kim Jong Un's face in the background.
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.
'9/11 style attacks'? So if these movies are screened, attackers will sneak in, fueled up with convenience-store-bought Raisinets and armed with box knives? Or are they going to crash an airliner into each theater?
We've become a nation where a college kid wishing to avoid a final exam can call in a bomb threat to close a campus. All threats, however implausible, must be taken seriously, just in case it truly is a real threat and an attack occurs. 99.999% of the time the threat is bogus, but if one doesn't act hysterically and it turns out to be the 0.001% situation, you're screwed (more likely by lawyers after the fact, not so much by the attack itself).
By caving to the threat, they are validating the use of this strategy, and are ensuring that they will get more threats like this in the future. It works.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I have the feeling the reason the show was cancelled , was because the pre-release feedback was very negative, that it was a bad film, but with those threat they saw an opportunity, and now they are priming the US market for a massive "buy it to spite terrorrist !" direct to DVD.
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This comes after the group which carried off a massive breach of its networks threatened to carry out "9/11-style attacks"
I can't believe anyone is cowering to these little bastards. Who in their right mind believes any group is going to hijack planes, or even gas trucks and suicide bomb movie theaters? If they would have threatened Batman/Aurora style attacks I would have given them a little more credence. I mean why didn't they just go for broke and threaten Nagasaki style attacks? Or really go all out and threaten Chicxulub or Krakatoa?
So they managed to break Sony's "security" and steal a bunch of data. Wow! From what I've read about Sony and their IT security, this could be a 12 year old girl in Tajikistan who did this for fun. There's been no indication that there is any credible physical threat to anyone. Yet everyone's running around in a panic. What the hell has happened to this country?
The other side of promoting this fear mongering over terrorism, is that people get so scared, they believe their own bullshit. What decades of fear mongering have done is made us a nation of cowards, unable to cope with idle threats, most likely by people incapable of pulling them off. the largest army in the world, the most advanced weapons, the biggest navy by far, with the most amount and most advanced carriers, and we are still scared of unspecified threats on the internet. Sweet Jesus fuck. I think instead of spending millions on tanks, and Jets, and aircraft carriers, and shit that won't protect us, lets spend some time learning not to be affraid, and sticking up for what we believe in, instead of paying the defense industry out the nose for what ultimately won't protect us?
You know... Police, Army, Navy, Air Force, NSA, CIA, FBI, NRA, bronies...
If they can't secure a fuckin mall for an afternoon... What are you paying them for?
Also, WHAT "rational cautions and plausible evidence"?
All the public got so far was some overdue candid insight into scheming of a mega-corporation and what it REALLY thinks about people it uses, hires and its customers.
If that's terrorism, seems to me there's a great demand for more of it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The decision to not show it is based on the other movies that wouldn't be seen because 5-10% of the populace would rather not take the chance, however small, of a terrorist action. The studios count on Christmas holiday revenue and to risk that much is not acceptable.
That being said, I agree with you completely. Before, this was a hack, a nasty one at that. Now this is terrorism, and I almost pity the fools that made their veiled threat behind the keyboards...they will pay.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
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.
Sony Pictures is an American company that happens to be owned by a Japanese conglomerate. Sony bought out an American company.
Put it this way, no one considers Chrysler an Italian company. Neither is Sony Pictures.
I almost pity the fools that made their veiled threat behind the keyboards...they will pay.
And I am always thinking that the FBI must know a lot more than they let on. Just think of all the resources the NSA has to track this down - taps into every internet trunk line in the world. Surely they can follow the trail to the perpetrators, and deliver a punishment to fit the crime in their own time. They may never even tell us about it, but somewhere, someday, some people will mysteriously meet up with a premature death. For sure the US Gov has an interest in this, above and beyond what they would have in hacks of Target & Home Depot, because the unique wanton destructiveness of the hack and the terrorists threats.
Yeah.. after a real, actual shooting (Dark Knight Rises) a few years ago -- people still went and saw it. An actual, physical event, with a body count, and it did not scare people away. Copycats be damned.
this is just sad. Sony perhaps looking for a reason to pull the movie to save face (IE, they know it's shit.)
Something seems off on this whole thing. They are afraid of 911 style threats... at a movie theater?! The Koreans probably got something else on the executives. Something so good that the execs are giving in to these crazy demands. The whole 911 thing sounds like an alternative explanation for whats really going on.
That spot is already taken by Battlefield Earth.
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"well, you see, you just don't have enough of us..."
What are you paying them for?
Choking black people?
Actually, the proper term is "seppuku". "Harakiri" is a word used by lower classes...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Exactly. But since the theaters dun goofed and Sony compounded their incompetence with a double-helping of cowardice, we need to compensate. Clearly, what needs to happen now is for Anonymous to hack Sony again and release the movie to Bittorrent.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
If you are an American, you should know ...
The cops are there to enjoy Dunkin Donuts
The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine are there to be used to invade yet another foreign country
The NSA, CIA, FBI are there to invade our privacy
The IRS are there to harass us and to take our money
As for the congress ? They are there to talk shit
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Borderline despicable behavior on Sony's part actually. The movie industry makes an enormous amount of money because of the freedom of speech. But when it comes time to defend that freedom this is how they behave.
The Supreme Court never said that corporation are people. That's just a talking point of the left, taken from the post-decision spin of the losing side in the court case.
All the court really said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same speech rights as individuals.
(2) The nature of the group (corporation, labor union, activist group, etc) does not matter.
(3) Media corporations (i.e. traditional news) have no special rights with respect to speech, all corporations have the same speech rights.
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 ...
The terrorists can be trapped. Have a few theaters where there is a double feature of "The Interview" and "Team America: World Police", that should lure the NK agents to those theaters.