So North Korea has given Sony the BEST marketing campaign EVER.

Tons of free publicity
Stoke liberal audience: SUPPORT FREEDOM OF SPEECH! SEE THE MOVIE
Stoke Conservative Audience: FIGHT TERRORISM! SEE THE MOVIE

Have we had a chitty chat about the toxic culture in Hollywood? The hack has been ripe for that.

And Episodes 200 & 201 of South Park remain relevant as ever.

Aaron Sorkin pointed out the irony: in the Hollywood version of this story, Hollywood would unite behind Sony. The studios would regard this as an attack on all studios, the guilds as an attack on all their members, and the government would regard it as an attack on a major US export.

In the non-Hollwood movie of reality, they're all circling like vultures.

Definitely seeing it now.

This movie itself is enough of a terrorist attack. Why add insult to injury.

These people had no problem with Margaret Cho portraying their (former) dear leader?

Also, this movie is bullshit for not casting Cho as Kim Jong-fils.

There's something unsettling about making the assassination of an actual living head of state - even North Korea's - into a film, let alone another low-brow stoner comedy. This is crass commerce, not art. The principle of free expression is worth defending, but this trashy money grab is the worst possible vehicle to mount it on.

Everyone who DOESN'T live in North Korea pretty much already figured out this was going to be a dog turd of a film a long time ago, and most likely it would have died the quick, ignoble death it undoubtedly deserved. Instead, all this "controversy" and the threats have simply provided Mssrs. Rogen and Franco with incalculable amounts of free publicity, not to mention an "edgy" cache they most likely otherwise would not have been able to earn with truckloads of marketing money. People will now flock to see it, threats be damned, just to prove they're not afraid, thus turning it into a hit, which is really rather sad, because nobody is going to be seeing it because of it's quality (or rather lack thereof.)

Although I personally can't shed too many tears about the pasting Sony suits are taking as a result of the release of their hacked emails; Hollywood suits being just unredeemingly evil as a general rule.

@#8

There's something unsettling about making the assassination of an actual living head of state - even North Korea's - into a film, let alone another low-brow stoner comedy

Are you aware of this:

Death of a President is a 2006 British high concept mockumentary political thriller film about the fictional assassination of George W. Bush, the 43rd U.S. President, on 19 October 2007 in Chicago, Illinois.

George W Bush is scum, from whose disastrous mismanagement our nation may never recover - but there are worse things than an unwatchably dumb film about murdering a cartoonish dictator in a small distant land that doesn't show western films, and far closer to home.

I'm not sure why everyone is so sure this is going to suck...Rogen has a pretty good track record as a writer and...oh, right. This is the Slog, where everything sucks and deserves scorn. Never mind.

This movie better be Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, Ben-Hur and Titanic all wrapped in one to be worth the trouble it has caused Sony. Rogen and Franco get to make movies like this because they do them cheap & on time, making them reliable money makers for the studios. That may change. The current problems were rather predictable, as this was a weak movie idea from the start and probably should have stuck to the Funny or Die level of production.

@11 E-mails leaked said it was desperately unfunny.

Also missing from Constant's article is that Howard Stern, in an interview with Franco and Rogen, compared the leaks to 9/11 just a couple days before this threat of violence occurred.

@3 ?? idk what 200 is, but 201 is 'Terrance & Phillip in "Not Without My Anus"' ....

Sure, it's lowbrow, but I've liked previous lowbrow comedies with Seth Rogen and/or James Franco. This is the sort of movie I'd probably rent on video later. But if it gets halfway decent reviews, I'll probably go see it in a theater now.

Really didn't want to see this movie.

@15 "200" and "201" are the banned episodes from Season 14 that had Stan's (or Kyle's, I can't remember) censored speech about terrorists. It was another Mohammed episode where they censored the character again, but this time Matt and Trey did it on purpose. The episode leaked online and you can find the actual speech that Comedy Central wouldn't air.

Also, speaking of Matt and Trey, I don't seem to recall a whole lot of bitching from North Korea when Team America was released ten years ago. Kim Jong Il was mocked heavily in that one. Shows you what society we live in now. Everyone is hypersensitive, whereas even North Korea didn't give a shit back then about American lampooning its fearless leader.

@10 Of course there's always something "worse" than something else. But using it to justify judging the latter less harshly is like the kid who tells his dad, "Yes I burned down the garage playing with matches but my friend Billy burned down his whole house." Judging merit against a "worse thing" will always make it look better by comparison. But that doesn't mean it's good. It just means the claiment employs the worst instead of the best for their comparison. Even if this film were in the same league as Death Of A President, which it apparently is not on virtually every level, that still doesn't mean both don't tread questionable ground by fictionalizing the assassination of a living person. And while the former may have attempted some artistic, intellectual or even political merit, the latter's crass corporate commercialism has no such premise and targets the bottom of the barrell for the sole purpose of turning some profit for Sony stockholders.
Not my biggest compliant with popular culture - there's a lot that's "worse". But that doesn't make The Interview a more meteriotous film.