Sony Statement Releases Defending Not Releasing 'The Interview' Movie, Read Full Here
This has been a rough week for Sony, with the hacked emails going viral and sharing large amounts of private information. After the leak, came threats that people attending the new movie The Interview would be in harms way at the theater.
After it was officially announced that North Korea was behind the hacking attacks, theaters began dropping the movie for fear of the safety of their patrons.
Sony officially released a statement regarding the pulling of The Interview from theaters:
"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 studio shared.
Sony added, "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."
President Obama came out and publicly disagreed with Sony's decision saying that we should not let fear from other countries dictate our decisions and wishes that Sony would have asked him about the decision before it was made.