Canceling the December 25 release of “The Interview” comedy was not meant as a way for Sony to say that the movie would never reach its viewers, but a choice to wait for proper distribution channels after the threat of bombing theaters if they stuck to the release schedule.
David Boies, lawyer for Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), said that following the decision of many cinema owners not to show the movie, the company simply had no choice but delay the release.
There are multiple choices to roll out the movie
“Sony only delayed this. Sony has been fighting to get this picture distributed. It will be distributed,” he told NBC’s Chuck Todd.
However, at the moment, Sony is looking for the best way to push it to the public, Boies said in an interview on Sunday at NBC’s Meet the Press. “How it's going to be distributed, I don't think anybody knows quite yet,” he added.
There were rumors towards the end of last week that Sony would rely on Crackle, its own streaming service, to get the movie out to the public, for free, but this has been denied by a spokesperson for the company.
Sony has received some offers to distribute the movie, one of them coming from Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, who offered $100,000 / €73,000 for the rights, in order to share it online, free of charge.
BitTorrent also tried to get “The Interview” from Sony, also proposing distribution through its own publishing service, BitTorrent Bundle.
Christian Averil, BitTorrent Director of Communications, said that the platform would allow Sony to capitalize on the movie, since Bundle has a paygate option that permits setting up a price for accessing the content.
Pulling down official content has not been explained
What David Boies did not explain was Sony’s decision to take down all official content related to “The Interview.” This decision came after Guardians of Peace, the hackers that pillaged SPE’s network, demanded the company that “everything related to the movie, including its trailers” be pulled down. The leverage was leaking new information to the public.
The company complied with this order, but it appears that it did not cave in to another request, delivered in the same message, after canceling the release of the movie on Christmas day, as originally planned:
“Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy,” reads the alleged email from GoP to Sony’s top executives.
Last week, the FBI’s investigation concluded that the attack on SPE was carried out by the North Korean government.