AMC, Regal, and other chains are pulling The Interview

[noa]

I'm pretty surprised at how gutless everyone is. I have no idea how funny the movie will be, but I liked the trailer and I was hoping to see it. I wonder how much they could make if it goes straight to on demand.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/source-top-five-theater-circuits-758843

[tk13]

I get the arguments on how we shouldn't cave to some foreign entity and all that... I think the biggest factor is Aurora though. If that hadn't happened I wonder if this would've received the same response. They know it can actually happen now. And there's really no way to stop it if some rogue idiot decides to go forward.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by tk13

I get the arguments on how we shouldn't cave to some foreign entity, it's true... I think the biggest factor might still be Aurora though. If that hadn't happened I wonder if this would've received the same response. They know it can actually happen now. And there's really no way to stop it.

I agree.

Do you guys realize how easy it would be for a foreign country with nearly endless wealth to hire a mercenary(s) to walk into the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd to shoot up the place and escape?

It could literally shut down the movie theater business as we know it in America.

[unlurking]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

I agree.

Do you guys realize how easy it would be for a foreign country with nearly endless wealth to hire a mercenary(s) to walk into the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd to shoot up the place and escape?

It could literally shut down the movie theater business as we know it in America.

Just like the Taliban have proven they can do to a school in Pakistan. I'm sure it would be just as easy to hire mercenaries to do that here, right? Or to attack abortion clinics maybe? Might as well say it would be easy to attack a restaurant or a fast food chain? Maybe a federal building?

All of these places have been attacked on our soil, by our own citizens. Yet we still don't close them down. Nope. We'll wait until a foreign threat, that DoD has stated is non-credible BTW, and then we'll close these things down.

We should not be playing the what if game and appeasing terrorists/dictators out of fear.

[Gravedigger]

So now that we've pulled the movie they won't attack us right?... We gave into their demands! They can't attack us now. We're acting like a bunch of 5 year olds and we just got punked. If they're going to attack us, they would do it anyways because everyone knows what happens in the movie anyways. Someone needs to get this movie, and feed it to the Internet so it eventually gets around anyways. Sony can say they got hacked and the movie was a bootleg copy, nothing they could do. I hope Anonymous gets on this.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

I agree.

Do you guys realize how easy it would be for a foreign country with nearly endless wealth to hire a mercenary(s) to walk into the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd to shoot up the place and escape?

It could literally shut down the movie theater business as we know it in America.

You are talking about a nation that routinely says they are going to destroy America about 4 or 5 times a year.

This is not a threat that we're pretty sure they won't carry through, but not completely sure, so maybe we should be safe.... no, we know for 100% absolute certain that they were making yet another empty threat and absolutely nothing whatsoever would have happened. This is not something thats in doubt, nothing would have happened, and the movie theater chains are all a bunch of gutless reeruns.

[unlurking]

I originally had no plans to see this, then I was interested in seeing it because **** NK, now I again have no interest in seeing it because **** Sony.

[Aries Walker]

I think Rob Lowe said it best: "Neville Chamberlain would be proud."

[unlurking]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

I think Rob Lowe said it best: "Neville Chamberlain would be proud."

Saw that this morning. Great comment.

Also see that another North Korea film as now been cancelled (not Sony)...

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/medi...l?iid=HP_River

A Steve Carell "paranoid" thriller "that was to be set in North Korea" has been scrapped, according to Deadline and other entertainment news outlets...

[unlurking]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

?

Sony as a whole, not SPE (I'm assuming).

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/tech...html?iid=HP_LN

The massive hack that's humiliating Sony executives and enraging Hollywood stars has drawn plenty of attention to Sony's money-losing movie business.

But the film business is really the least of Sony's problems.

That's partly because Sony's studio accounts for less than 10% of its total sales.

The company is really struggling in the realm of electronics, which it once dominated with innovations like the Sony Walkman and the Trinitron TV.

• Its TV manufacturing unit, which once produced Sony's fattest profit margins, now struggles to make money.
• It dropped out of the personal computer business earlier this year.
• Sony's smartphone business has just 3% of the market. And it wrote down the value of that unit by $1.7 billion last quarter, which led to another loss for the entire company. It lost $1.2 billion in its fiscal year that ended in March.
• Its debt was downgraded to junk bond status early this year.
• It recently suspended its dividend for the first time in its history.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by unlurking

Sony as a whole

My experience with Japanese owned entertainment division that operate in America isn't good. Sony has been a mess for a long, long time and they continue to churn out bad films. Their music division has always been hit and miss. They're just not well-run in the US.

I worked for MCA/Universal when it was owned by Matsushita, which is Panasonic's parent company. It was a disaster. They hired the wrong people, the music and movie divisions faltered and ultimately was sold to Edgar Bronfman, jr., the Seagram's heir. It took him some time to get footing in the entertainment business but he turned both the music and movie divisions around pretty quickly.

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by unlurking

Sony as a whole, not SPE (I'm assuming).

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/tech...html?iid=HP_LN

This is true, but the movie studio to a small extent, and especially the vfx and animation divisions, which have been a focus of alot of the leaked information, have always run at a deficit, sometimes enormous, but they were ego divisions whose losses were covered by sharing an umbrella with the games division. The problem is that everyone can see it now and it is pretty embarrassing.

You will notice that they are not included in the labor collusion lawsuits against animation companies and ILM. This is because they were always driving up labor prices and poaching freely from anyone. The cost of that spending shows up when the talent leaves, not because of the company as many articles purport, but because the salaries could not be sustained as other divisions of Sony were not covering the losses anymore. They are awful places to work. Nobody has ever worked at either of those two divisions for any reason other than money, the highest salary offered, by a wide margin, like 30-35% more than market value, and frankly they never had the best talent anyway.

Ego is the primary driver of Sony operations in the entertainment sector. This hack has truly exposed that. There will be massive reorganization, but it won't be easy since they can't afford the crazy salaries they used to offer. If electronics and other big divisions are run in any way the same, I don't know if they can recover.

Too bad about the computers. I have had two Sony Vaio models and they were my favorite computers, but they probably lost money on those too and they weren't cheap. I have finally switched to Apple because of that. The shame of what might actually be in the stolen data has got to be worse than the shame we are already seeing.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by underEJ

I have finally switched to Apple because of that.

Did you go with the new Mac Pro? I thought about it but instead built an i7 4790k PC with 32 gigs of RAM and multiple SSD's on Win 8.1x64. I've had it up and running since Tuesday and it's insane how much data can be streamed from my drives while locked to video.

[Gravedigger]

If nobody attacked America for Team America: World Police, then why would they do it for this movie? I don't remember any crazy terror threats when that movie came out.

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

Did you go with the new Mac Pro? I thought about it but instead built an i7 4790k PC with 32 gigs of RAM and multiple SSD's on Win 8.1x64. I've had it up and running since Tuesday and it's insane how much data can be streamed from my drives while locked to video.

I looked at them pretty seriously, but I couldn't make the numbers work for what I need to do in the near future, so I maxed out an iMac and if I still need more processing, I can max out another iMac and still not hit the cost of a MacPro with similar cores and memory. Obviously there would be performance differences in the MacPro, but I have not even come close to stressing it interactively yet working with pretty heavy scene files even without the dual GPU. I do take a hit on final render times, but I am considering using a vendor for final renders in which case I probably wouldn't even need the second iMac.

I'm pretty happy with my choice, though the MacPros are so sleek and so fast. It was very tempting. If I had clients at my desk, I probably would have opted for the supercharged interactivity, but I don't. This is just for my own side projects.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by Gravedigger

If nobody attacked America for Team America: World Police, then why would they do it for this movie? I don't remember any crazy terror threats when that movie came out.

Apparently they've pulled showings of TAWP as well now.