Sony Backs Theaters Pulling ‘The Interview’

Hours after actors James Franco and Seth Rogen canceled their public appearances for The Interview, Sony Pictures? has agreed to back theaters who want to pull the film.

Normally this wouldn’t be something a studio supports, but in light of the Guardians of Peace threatening to wreak havoc on theater goers who sit down to any showings of the comedy, we can see why Sony Pictures is giving support to theaters who decide not to release the film on December 25.

This move comes hours after the Guardians of Peace issued a statement of threatening a 9/11-style threat to theaters who show The Interview. Up until now, Guardians of Peace have isolated their threats to Sony Pictures’ employees, in addition to leaking confidential information including emails, staff passwords, and client privilege information.

According to Variety, most theaters declined to comment on the situation, but CEO of Look Cinemas said, “It’s unfortunate. If they play it, we’ll show it. Sony has a right to make the movie, we have a right to play it and censorship in general is a bad thing.”

Interestingly enough, AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Carmike — all very prominent theater chains — saw their stock drop as soon as the news came out of a possible attack.

MKM Partners’ analyst Eric Handler didn’t think this threat would affect the outcome of theaters showing The Interview.

“It ultimately comes down to security. If there are concerns about actual terrorist acts than you have to think about pulling it … but there is no evidence that this cyber attack will escalate to anything above or beyond that.”

As the Inquisitrreported earlier, Homeland Security has looked at this particular threat and doesn’t see any merit.

“DHS is aware of a threat made online targeting movie theaters in the United States. We are still analyzing the credibility of these statements, but at this time there is no credible intelligence to indicate an active plot against movie theaters within the United States.”

Although it hasn’t been confirmed that these hacks are from North Korea, The Interview garnered the attention from the country when Sony dropped the trailer in the summer. The film is about a television host (Franco) and his producer (Rogen) who get wrangled by the CIA into killing North Korea’s current leader Kim Jong-Un, who is also depicted in the film. At the time, sources from North Korea threatened America with violence if Sony Pictures went ahead and released the film.

It’s said that Sony did call for a tamer killing of Kim Jong-un — but they still plan to release the film.

[Image via Sony Pictures]