Flickering Myth:
There’s no point in fighting amongst ourselves. We all know the real enemy here are the ones terrorizing Sony and threatening violence. Still, I think somewhere between the principle and the production budget, we as a society have to understand that free speech can still have a cost, or in the case of The Interview, a price tag.
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Of course it's protecting the bottom line – that's all a Hollywood studio really cares about, either way. The Interview failed all of Hollywood in setting precedent like it's been said here or anywhere else. If you put up enough of a fuss, any movie can get canned. Any movie.
Granted, it wasn't half has big as, say, canceling Avengers or Star Wars over threats, but as far as the theater chains were concerned, what else could they do but pull themselves out of the fire and avoid as much of this mess as they could.
What would the narrative have looked like if someone did die in a theater attack, as has happened before? AMC, Regal, or someone else would've been held responsible for knowing ahead of time.
I don't blame the theaters for the debacle; it was their prerogative to avoid controversy, but Sony ought to release The Interview on VOD for the sheer sake of freedom of speech as much as precedent against threats like these from carrying weight. In the end, the scandal surrounding the film probably would've generated even more money on VOD on PS4 than before.
It's a good article, I'm commenting or conversation sake:
First to answer the headline, I think the lack of VOD demands proves that bottom line is the case. Like I've been saying, Sony already got hacked, nothing worse could happen to them. The problem was how dumb our country is becoming and some moron carrying out the actions of the threats. It has nothing to do with suppression, just simple they didn't want people to get hurt. That being said, no VOD has nothing to do with anything but Sony not wanting to lose money in box office.
In terms of the movie, Seth and crew make a few "main stream" movies to make money in order to make something they want to make. Think Green Hornet to Pineapple Express, or Knocked Up to whatever. The Interview was their movie. They made it to be funny (which is an art) and to make a freedom of speech point, this NK guy sucks and people hate him. Who else has balls to say that? If it's not creative freedom, why did Seth fight so hard to keep the death scene intact? I'm pretty sure they were expecting hate mail, or some anger obviously, that's what they wanted. They were not expecting him to go full on insane and hack an entire company because of a comedy....
Opinion #2, That was my initial reaction to it "how were they allowed to make that, that's awesome!" Truth is, a lot of people dislike the guy, that's how. He "deserves" to be made fun of basically.
Opinion 3, I'm not a stoner and I enjoy their movies :P Well except for This Is The End, that movie sucked.... so did Your Highness.
I wish someone made a movie for theaters making fun of Americans and its culture and that its premise is about killing the president. Let's see how the land of the free takes it.
Well...when Sony's actions fall in line with hacker's demands by self-censoring a piece of their funded expression it's pretty obvious that answer's about the bottom line.
I don't mean that to demonize Sony, because I can understand why these action were taken, but you gotta call it like you see it.