Sony hasn’t had the best couple of weeks, they’ve had their systems hacked to reveal information that Sony’s top brass hoped to take to the grave and after threats from some bonkers extremists, they’ve buckled in and cancelled the release of The Interview.
But… There are still options. Sony are actively looking to bring The Interview to audiences, though according to the studio nobody has stepped up and offered their online services as a platform to distribute the Seth Rogan/James Franco comedy.
Speaking in an interview with CNN, Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton stated the following:
There are a number of options open to us, and we have considered those and are considering those. As it stands right now, while there have been a number of suggestions… there has not been one major VOD distributor [or] one major e-commerce site that has stepped forward and said they’re willing to distribute this movie for us… Again we don’t have that direct interface with the American public.
Another statement has also been released from the multimedia corporation:
Sony Pictures Entertainment is and always has been strongly committed to the First Amendment. For more than three weeks, despite brutal intrusions into our company and our employees’ personal lives, we maintained our focus on one goal: getting the film The Interview released. Free expression should never be suppressed by threats and extortion.
The decision not to move forward with the December 25 theatrical release of The Interview was made as a result of the majority of the nation’s theater owners choosing not to screen the film. This was their decision.
Let us be clear – the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it. Without theaters, we could not release it in the theaters on Christmas Day. We had no choice.
After that decision, we immediately began actively surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform. It is still our hope that anyone who wants to see this movie will get the opportunity to do so.
It’s a royal shame that Sony has decided to cancel the theatrical release of The Interview following threats from the hackers calling themselves ‘Guardians of Peace’.
We were really looking forward to seeing Franco and Rogan in action and it was going to be our very first movie review here on The Games Cabin. Instead, we’re just going to have to review Babe: Pig in the City. Blame the Guardians of “peace” for that one.