And....
Not a single fuck was given.
Apple has begun offering the controversial Sony Pictures' movie The Interview, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, for rent and sale on its Stateside and Canada iTunes stores. Fanbois who are willing to shell out $14.99 can purchase a high-definition version of the Nork-ribbing flick from Apple's online shop. It comes days …
Only if making a loss was the objective. That all the major chains have declined to show it somewhat limits income — it had a budget of something like $44m and made only $1m in screenings during its opening weekend due to the limited release.
There's also the likely future employment prospects for Amy Pascal et al in the corner of not-such-a-great-set-of-circumstances.
really? in this day and age, is the cinema box office takings really that much of a percentage of the films income?
after all the hype and the endless free advertising that the press gave the movie, i'd be surprised if they hadn't already made back teh $44m in just the first few days of download sales.
> Only if making a loss was the objective.
It usually is. See "Hollywood accounting".
The other fun thing about this particular celluloid atrocity is that it apparently contains pirated music.
So, I read an excellent review on ElReg. It looks like this:
It's absolute pants. I watched 20mins and meh. Smacks of marketing campaign to me when Sony realised they had a turkey.
I decide it's bang on, and reading that on the Register is better than watching the movie. Judging by the upvotes, other people also seem to think it was an excellent review. Then why am I getting downvotes for agreeing? Not that a few downvotes makes no nevermind, but I do have to wonder what is going on here.
It does make one wonder doesn't it? The "hack", the threats, the e-mail and HR file releases, the stupid movie. Hell, even the government got involved. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Norks but whether it was an inside job or some formerly unknown hijacking/malevolent group still needs to be found out. And there's the PR spin from Sony.... and everyone seems to be falling for it. As if that's not enough of the Streisand Effect, there's the falling over of the NK 'Net... and Playstation fallover.
After contemplating this for a bit, I suspect that Sony (at least the entertainment section) will disappear by year's end (2016) with the games and electronics slowly going down the toilet after them. There's just been too much PR BS floating under the bridge for guy in the street to not notice. And probably golden parachutes for the C-Suite types and the Board.
"Can you compare those numbers to those of a 'hit movie'?"
No, no I can't. I rarely look at those numbers. I happened to have a torrent site open, and when I refreshed, "The Interview" was at the top of the movies category, thought it was a big number as well as the price Apple is asking for a marginal movie that was never "supposed" to be released.
I'd heard all the negative reviews, so I went in expecting the worst, but I thought it was actually pretty good. Extremely tasteless certainly, but definitely funny and pleasingly subversive, not wrt the NORKs, but about US foreign policy. "How long are you [the US] going to keep making the same mistakes [trying to 'fix' countries by removing the leader]?". "As long as we have to!". Quite.
...and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
(unlike a lot of these other commentators who have probably watched it 5 times since release but claim they hate it just to look cool)
I don't normally like this style of comedy, but this movie was engaging right to the end, had some genuinely funny moments and while there were definitely bits of the story that I thought were just completely stupid and shouldn't have been there, overall I thought it was a pretty good movie.
Sony would be $15 richer if they decided on a worldwide release of this movie, like they should have.
What were they thinking for a US only release when Australians are such huge bittorrent users?
It would have been really bad for free speach if there was a complete cave-in on showing the movie, even if the reviews of the film seem to trend towards sophmoric.
Unfortunately, now Fox has simultaneously cancelled a planned Steve Carrell film set in North Korea. It seemed like it was a biographical film of a journalist who was given unusual levels of access to North Korea. Not sure if this would have been played for laughs or if this is Steve Carrell's "I've done comedy. Now I need to prove I am a serious actor" movie, but I don't like the idea that because North Korea may have cyber-attacked Sony over The Interview, now just about any film on the DPRK is off-limits.
North Korea is a terrible regime, maybe the worst human rights regime in the whole world. What goes on there needs to be either thoughtfully explored or mercilessly lampooned.