You may have thought the hacking scandal was officially over. Well, that's sort of true. Yesterday, the popular studio announced it was pulling The Interview’s Christmas Day release and had no plans to make the film available in the future. To celebrate, the hackers allegedly did what hackers do best, sent another email with more demands, promising the data breaches would stop, if a few more conditions were met from now until forever.
According to CNN, the hackers want Sony to agree to never release the film on any form, including but not limited to Blu-ray and VOD. They don’t want to see the film on any piracy sites, and in addition, they allegedly want the company to pull down any trailers, advertisements and any additional signs of the film’s existence. In short, they want it to be like the movie simply never existed. Gee, the blackmailers got exactly what they wanted and then issued more demands? How shocking.
As with any high profile crime-type situation, it’s almost impossible to ascertain with 100% certainty whether or not the communications are legitimate, but Sony is apparently comfortable that the most recent email is from the hackers because of who it was addressed to and the pattern the information was presented in. As anyone who has ever seen Criminal Minds could tell you, we all have little ways of doing things that link our actions together.
Sony hasn’t released a statement yet in terms of whether or not executives will comply with the alleged demands, but one quick look at Sony’s official YouTube page shows some random Interview-related content, but no reference whatsoever to the trailer, just a few videos that are mysteriously private.
The whole situation is, quite possibly, the most insane thing to happen in the history of Hollywood. That’s not an exaggeration. People have been murdered. People have been blackmailed. There have been orgies, affairs and mob ties. Studios have been embroiled in the most unbelievable scandals, but, for my money, the only thing that even comes close to what’s happening here is the Blacklist and House Un-American Activities Committee, which tore a hole through the entire industry and pushed former friends and business associates on the opposite sides of the aisle. That was more than five decades ago.
The Sony hack began innocently enough when several of the studio’s upcoming movies were put on the Internet. Several rounds of highly sensitive data breaches followed, which included the dumping of numerous unflattering emails. Behind the scenes, other studios allegedly began putting pressure on Sony to bail on The Interview. The pushing only intensified when the hackers promised 9/11-style violence to any theaters that showed the flick. Most of the theaters then backed out, and with very few left to show it, Sony finally pulled the plug.
Here’s to hoping this isn’t the start of a very slippery slope.
