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Sony: 'The Interview' Will Have a Limited Theatrical Release

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-was-all-a-viral-marketing-scheme dept.

New submitter clovis writes: It's not over until it's over. Sony Pictures has announced that The Interview will be getting a limited theatrical release after all. The Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain has authorization to show the film, and The Plaza Theater in Atlanta will show it as well. It's not yet clear whether the major theater chains will choose to show the movie despite the threats against them. Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Layton said, "[W]e are continuing our efforts to secure more platforms and more theaters so that this movie reaches the largest possible audience." There are unconfirmed reports that Sony will make the movie available over video-on-demand as well.

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. They realized how badly they screwed up by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The movie probably sucks. But bowing down to pressure from North Korea is ridiculous.

    I am sure Hitler did not like The Great Dictator, but if he had tried to blackmail a US company into cancelling it, we would have laughed at him.

    Sony should have done the same. I don't care what they got from the stolen emails, the only way to deal with terrorists demanding obedience is a bullet to their head, not a bow to to their feet.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:They realized how badly they screwed up by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you listened to the interviews from the very beginning, the Sony Pictures CEO's line has basically always been "Guys, I can't _officially_ say that we're still releasing it until we negotiate more, but I swear to god it's still going to happen unless the theaters are even dumber than I thought". Dude sounded really pissed and barely restrained by his PR department; I'm convinced that it was 100% playing hardball with distributors and 0% international politics.

      Honestly I'm amazed at the reporting on this. THEATERS caved. Sony said "uh, we're not going to open the show in like two theaters nationwide", theaters took about a week to snap out of "oh god horror the turrists" mode...but it seemed pretty obvious from the beginning that that was going to be the timeline here.