Courtesy The Hollywood Reporter:
Whether or not North Korea is behind the Sony hack, Kim Jong Un better brace himself because The Interview is headed to his country. Human rights activists are planning to airlift DVDs of the Seth Rogen comedy into the country via hydrogen balloons.
Fighters for a Free North Korea, run by Park Sang Hak, a former government propagandist who escaped to South Korea, has for years used balloons to get transistor radios, DVDs and other items into North Korea — not to entertain the deprived masses, but to introduce them to the outside world.
Of course at this point there is no telling when the DVD will be released, but I have a feeling that once it has been that this will be the most popular item on the North Koreans "gifts from the sky" wish list.
Today cable news, newspapers, and websites are all over this news about the Sony hack and the decision to pull The Interview from theaters. In fact it has even knocked the Senate torture report off of the front pages.
I personally do not think this is quite as important, but it IS very important and potentially problematic moving forward.
The idea that a bunch of hackers sitting on their couch eating Cheetos can frighten a wealthy movie studio into stopping the release of a major motion picture should give all of us pause.
And whether you thought the movie should have been made or not, or that it went too far, is really beside the point. After all how many world leaders, and racial stereotypes, have we killed in American movies over the years.
In the James Bod film "Die Another Day" the bad guys were North Koreans, The same is true for the remake of "Red Dawn," Angelina Jolie's "Salt," and "Olympus Has Fallen."
In that last film by the way the filmmakers also shot the White House full of holes.
Hell in "Independence Day" the filmmakers blew up the White House altogether, as well as most of the rest of the world, and (Spoiler alert.) even killed the President's wife. (There even exists a "fakeumentary" about the killing of George W. Bush, made in 2006.)
If a movie goes too far, or is in bad taste, that should be reflected in poor sales and bad reviews. And it should not result in threats of terrorist attack or the hacking computers and releasing private information to the public.
Bowing to this kind of pressure is setting a very, very dangerous precedent.
For those who have wondered what all of the fuss is about, here is the scene where Kim Jong-Un is killed.
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