Crowds (and Pirates) Flock To 'The Interview'

Rambo Tribble writes: Many of the 300+ theaters showing The Interview on Christmas were rewarded with sell-out crowds. While reviews of the comedy have been mixed, many movie-goers expressed solidarity with the sentiment of professor Carlos Royal: "I wanted to support the U.S." Despite sellout crowds, the movie's limited release meant it only brought in about $1 million on opening day (compared to $10M+ for the highest-grossing films). Curiosity about the film seems high, since hundreds of thousands rushed to torrent the film, and others figured out an extremely easy way to bypass Sony's DRM.

Comments

didn't go didn't download, don't care

[Nyder]

I didn't go see it, I won't download it. I don't care about the movie.

I find the whole business with it, the hack & blaming North Korea to be a stupid fucking incident and I'm not rewarding Sony for being a cunt.

Re:didn't go didn't download, don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

Because America is currently overstuffed with morons and ruled by moron herders.

Re:didn't go didn't download, don't care

[Matheus]

Honestly I've found most of the conspiracy theorizing to be straight up comical. This movie has cost Sony $79 million. They made $1 million on opening day even with the fury because none of the major distributors would show it. They've lost far more with the early leaks of their other bigger budget films. If this really was a ploy to drive up viewership for this movie than it was a complete failure and as much as Sony makes some terrible decisions they haven't proven themselves to be quite this stupid in how they run their business.

My favorite comment in some article I read was this (paraphrasing): North Korea's guilt may be most telling in a certain absence: All of the movies stolen from Sony have made their way to the streets *except the one movie that North Korea doesn't want you to see. I have no proof and they may be completely innocent BUT there's a lot of good logic in that statement.

Anyway... I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It's not an Academy Award winner by far but that is not what I watch a Seth Rogan film for. Toilet humor at its finest is what it is was and always shall be. They happen to highlight the atrocities of (and really piss off) a terrible totalitarian regime in the process with a heavy dose of reality thrown in it seems (more than their other movies) so props to the effort.

Re:didn't go didn't download, don't care

[ScentCone]

Because not believing, with little evidence, NK is competent enough to pull this off makes you a B357 K0r34n 1337 h4xx0r.

What on earth makes you think that NK has to have the native talent? The didn't figure out how to make nukes on their own either. They didn't home-grow their substantial currency counterfeiting operation, either. They likewise don't design and build their own military equipment. But that doesn't stop them from having nukes, from doing big business in phony currency, and sinking other people's ships.

Re:didn't go didn't download, don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to say it was a big, fat marketing ploy to make the best off of two bad things (the breach and the fact that critics panned the movie even before the whole hacking thing).

Sony's monetary losses to recover from the security breach is estimated at >$100m. The movie cost ~$80m to make. So far, tickets sales have brought in $1m.

The marketing department needs to be fired.

Convenient!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very convenient for the government that everyone buys into the idea that the crackers were under orders from the North Korean government when there is no concrete evidence; they get to try to shove through new bills that will infringe upon our liberties in exchange for 'safety.' It's very convenient for Sony that people are this easily manipulated; they'll go and see the movie en masse thanks to all the nonsensical fearmongering.

They're just taking advantage of this for their own ends, as they often do. And the 'patriotic' American public is as dumb as ever.

Re:Convenient!

[paazin]

Are you implying that this was a publicity stunt planned by Sony?

The idea that Sony would be willing to accept the liability massive costs with disclosing private information of its employees really beggars belief; what money they could have made from the film would really not be worth the potential risk here.

Re:Fascist moderators!

[Free Censorship]

Your definition of "patriotism" seems strange. Mindlessly chanting "USA! USA! USA!" doesn't really qualify as "patriotism" in my book. Real patriots are fighting the NSA's mass surveillance and any silly draconian laws the government is trying to pass in response to this very convenient hack of a company with notoriously bad security.

Re:Fascist moderators!

[Dracos]

That sort of patriotism is about as sincere and effective as a flag lapel pin. It's fitting though that all this happened at Christmas, because seeing the movie now is just crass consumerism. Don't confuse the two.

Re:Fascist moderators!

[Free Censorship]

The US government is not trying to censor this movie, and there were no serious threats to begin with, so freedom of speech is safe.

This is just chest-thumping nonsense. You don't need to see a movie produced by an evil company that routinely abuses its customers in order to support freedom of speech.

Re:My review

[Comen]

Snarky assholes make snarky comments, go figure!
There is nothing wrong with watching a movie just for laughs and to relax, not every movie has to be watched so that you can prove how much of a intellectual you are. If you did not like the movie that's cool, no reason to be a dick about it.
If you watched this movie thinking it was going to be anything more than what you found, your the dumb ass, it was more than obvious.