close
near you. Not anytime soon, anyway.
Sony Pictures Entertainment s decision on Wednesday tocancel the comedy
film s planned opening represents justthe latest in a series of dramatic events
that started afew weeks ago when hackers breached the studio scomputer system.
It was soon followed by thoseapparently responsible releasing Sony s internal
e-mailsand the nation s largest movie theater owners decidingagainst showing the
movie.
On Tuesday, a note purportedly written by Guardians ofPeace, the hackers
who claimed to be behind lastmonth s cyber attack, sugges台中開公司ted a possible series
ofviolent attacks at any cinema screening The Interview —a Sony comedy that
portrays an assassination plotagainst a fictional version of North Korean leader
KimJong-un. (U.S. government officials said Wednesday thatNorth Korea was likely
behind the cyber attack, althoughthe country has denied any involvement.)
Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, CarmikeCinemas and Cineplex
Entertainment all confirmed onWednesday that they were postponing the release of
thefilm due to the threat, while Cinemark reportedly made asimilar decision.
Those companies are the country s fivelargest movie theater operators and they
control morethan 20,000 screens across the U.S. and Canada.
Faced with the likelihood that The Interview would finditself locked out of
a large chunk of the country s theaterswhen it made its Christmas debut next
week, Sony optedto scrap the theatrical release altogether. “We are
deeplysaddened by this brazen effort to suppress thedistribution of a movie, and
in the process do damage toour company, our employees and the American
public,”Sony said in a statement. “We stand by our filmmakersand their right to
free expression and are extremelydisappointed by this outcome.”
So, where does that leave Sony?
The Interview reportedly cost the company more than$40 million to make,
including $8.4 million to Rogen, whoco-wrote and stars in the film, and another
$6.5 millionfor Franco, the film s other leading star. (Their salarieswere among
the reams of data leaked in the wake of thehack.) Of course, that figure doesn t
even include tens ofmillions of dollars the company would have earmarkedfor
promoting the film — some of which it will likely savenow.
If Sony opts to cancel the release of The Interviewaltogether — rather than
postpone it — then the companywill obviously have a difficult time recouping its
expenses.Variety reported today that Sony is consideringcircumventing theaters
altogether and giving the film apremium video-on-demand release, which would
giveSony a chance to experiment with a new release methodwithout fear of
angering the movie theater operators thathave already passed on The
Interview.
It is difficult to say how much money Sony could make byselling The
Interview on demand directly to viewers homes, even with the added (though not
necessarilywelcome) buzz around the movie as a result of the hackand threats.
Some recent films have been made availableon-demand garnering some success
while they arestill in theaters. Earlier this year, the
critically-acclaimeddystopian action flick Snowpiercer made more
throughon-demand in its first two months than it did in a limitedtheater-run.
But the film still only pulled in $6.5 millionon-台中公司注?demand in that time and another
$4.5 million intheaters, according to Deadline.
The Interview was expected to bring in far more than $11million, though.
Box Office Mojo predicted gross ticketsales of around $90 million for the movie.
That scompared with past Rogen-Franco comedies like 2013 sThis is the End, which
pulled in $100 million, and 2008 sPineapple Express, which made about $87
million.
A Sony Pictures spokesman issued this additionalstatement to Fortune: “Sony
Pictures has no furtherrelease plans for the film.”
Now, Sony Pictures is left with just one major release tobolster its
holiday movie season: the remake of themusical Annie, which hits theaters this
week. So far,Sony Pictures films have pulled in $129 million during theholiday
season — a period that generally accounts formore than 20% of Hollywood s annual
ticket sales —compared to $322 million during last year s ho如何申請公司登記lidays.
TheInterview s expected ticket sales certainly would havehelped Sony make up
some of that ground.
For the full year, Sony Pictures gross sales are up about11.5%, which
actually makes it one of the few majorstudios to post a year-to-year gain in
2014. The movieindustry in general has seen sales to this point decline5.5% from
2013 and Hollywood is counting on asuccessful holiday movie season to reach at
least $10billion in total gross for the year — a mark the industryhas met every
year since 2008. Box Office Mojo s latestnumbers show the industry more than
$300 million awayfrom that goal with just a few weeks left before January,which
means The Interview s lost ticket sales could be ablow to more than just
Sony.
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責任編輯：王曉易_NE0011
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