First the conclusion: As soon as the major theatre chains announced that they would not release The Interview Sony should have boldly declared that they would distribute their controversial film through every other available channel including free-to-air over the internet. The company would undoubtedly have suffered a short-term financial loss equal to its sizable investment in producing the film (a reported $70 million); however it could have achieved a huge PR victory by standing up for freedom of expression and the rights of its content creators to tackle controversial subjects.
Instead Sony gave the impression that it first succumbed to foreign fear mongering and cancelled the theatrical release of the film and then flip-flopped to release The Interview after President Obama and a slew of artists accused the company of cowardice.
Some have argued that Sony should never have made the movie in the first place arguing that it is always wrong to make a film that includes the assassination of a sitting head of state. While I do not disagree with this view as a matter of cinematic taste this is not the issue at hand. As with so many serious and not-so-serious political satires before it the decision to produce once made by the studio should not be second-guessed. We cannot and should not assume away facts we do not like and bend our principles of freedom of expression to insist that the film should never produced. I doubt that The Great Dictator starring Charlie Chaplin as an absurd mock-Hitler was a big favorite in the Berlin of the 1940s but of course Hitler lacked offensive cyber capabilities (but was working on nuclear weapons).
It is perfectly understandable that several theatre chains made the decision not to show The Interview. While it would have been commendable if they had chosen to support the content creators who fill their theaters they are really just specialty landlords. They have little to gain and much to lose from any cyber or worse kinetic attack against their facilities and typically young staff.
Sony had other choices available to it. The movie studios have been complaining for years about the pirating of their films and the complicity of multiple internet distribution systems such as BitTorrent. In interviews this week Sony executives stated that they really wanted to release The Interview; however they were left with no means to do so when the major theatre chains chose not to show the movie.
In the 24 hours since I began writing this post Sony has apparently agreed to distribute The Interview through several hundred independent theaters as well as via video-on-demand (VOD) on YouTube Play Station and other outlets. This is a very good result; however I’m still left wondering what suddenly changed. What did Sony executives come to know by December 24 that they were not in a position to state last week when they were seen to be canceling the public release of the film? Either there is some highly classified information they are not free to share or their decision-making process is very slow or their usually adept public relations machine took an early Christmas holiday.
If Sony really planned all along to release the film come-what-may they should have come right out and said so from the beginning. Instead their measured (some would say slow and overly lawyered) approach comes across as a rather weak defense of freedom of expression from a company built upon creative content.
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