“You two are going to be in a room alone with Kim [Jong-un], and the CIA would love it if you could take him out.”
“Hm?”
“Take him out.”
“For coffee? Dinner? For kimchi?”
“No, uh, take him out.”
“You want us to kill the leader of North Korea?”
“Yes.”
In a nutshell, this dialogue with a CIA agent (played by Lizzy Caplan) describes the plot of The Interview, a comedic buddy movie about a disillusioned talk-show host (James Franco) and his producer (Seth Rogen). Invited to a rare interview by the reclusive North Korean monarch, they jump at the chance to do some serious journalism. The US government has a job for them as well, if only these two men, who haven’t quite grown up, can get their act together. But Kim Jong-un, it turns out, is as juvenile as they are, and the three of them hit it off — well, for a while, at least.
The Interview was directed and largely written by Rogen and his best friend, Evan Goldberg — both Canadian — who have built their careers on buddy movies. This one would have been mildly successful without all the recent publicity. But now it’s the film lots of people want to see, due to the circumstances that nearly prevented it from being shown.
On November 24, a group of hackers calling themselves Guardians of Peace, or GOP, broke into the computer network of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the American company that had made The Interview. They copied the personnel records of 47,000 employees, embarrassing e-mail messages from top executives, confidential contracts and plans for upcoming ventures, as well as several complete films that had not yet opened to the general public.
This might be the most serious direct attack on a US corporation ever. But the hackers weren’t done.
Three weeks later, they demanded that Sony withdraw The Interview and destroy all copies of it, or else. In broken English, they wrote,
“Warning: We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places The Interview be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment. All the world will denounce the SONY.” [sic]
The Department of Homeland Security said it had no knowledge of any credible threats against movie theaters. Just the same, with the film set to open on Christmas Day, the major theater chains decided not to take any chances, and said they would not show the film. Sony removed its advertising, shut down the social-media sites promoting the film and canceled Rogen’s public appearances.
This might be the most serious attack on a US corporation ever
The FBI said it saw similarities between the malware and infrastructure used this time and in previous cyberattacks carried out by North Korean operatives. The poor English and hyperbolic language would seem to fit the picture as well. The North Korean government had even complained to the UN back in July about making the assassination of a sitting head of state a subject of entertainment. (This complaint in fact led the parent corporation in Japan to ask for slight alterations to the scene.)
Although the North Korean regime said the hacking “might be a righteous deed [carried out by its] supporters and sympathizers”, it’s denied any involvement. In fact, it responded with its own threats against “the White House, the Pentagon and the whole US mainland” if these did not accept its offer of help to find the true perpetrator.
Cybersecurity experts are unsure whether to blame a country with practically no Internet infrastructure. GOP say they’ve copied about 38 million files — nearly 12 terabytes of data. Sony says they’ve copied closer to 100 terabytes. Would it be more plausible to suspect a former employee angered by “the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment”? “We all know the hacks didn’t come from North Korea,” the hackers’ group Anonymous said this week in a message to the FBI as it made its own threat. “Release The Interview as planned, or we shall carry out as many hacks as we are capable of to both Sony Entertainment and yourself.”
“We all know the hacks didn’t come from North Korea,” Anonymous said
In a show of support for the filmmakers, a theater group in New York City, working from a draft script, said it would bring the story to the stage this weekend. But then Sony agreed to distribute the film to cinemas in several Texas cities, where it will be shown this week. “We are proud … to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech,” Michael Lyndon, the head of Sony Pictures, said on Tuesday.
So strong is the sentiment about this being a free-speech issue that, without having seen the film, 40,000 users of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) have collectively rated it the third-best movie of all time, giving it 9.9 out of 10 stars.
As Sony no doubt knows, any publicity is good publicity. The company is said to have invested $75 million in this movie.
Sony’s rival, Paramount Pictures, is profiting from this as well. Its 2004 satire Team America: World Police, which also features a US assault on North Korea, has sold out on Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart.
