The Big Picture - 2. All Hope Will Leave You | The Hollywood Hack

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

‘The Hollywood Hack’ is a three-part narrative series chronicling the biggest Hollywood heist of all time: In the fall of 2014, a group of cyberterrorists hacked Sony Pictures, stealing hundreds of thousands of documents. The materials were eventually leaked online, causing an international incident that would change Hollywood forever.  In Episode 2, the hackers release hundreds of thousands of top-secret Sony emails—causing a scandal that reaches from Hollywood to the White House and beyond. Meanwhile, Sony’s employees deal with the fallout of having their professional lives upended—and their personal lives exposed.  Host: Brian Raftery  Producers: Devon Baroldi, Brian Raftery, and Vikram Patel Sound Design: Devon Renaldo Mixing and Mastering: Scott Somerville  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi listeners, if you're loving the Hollywood hack, then you might also enjoy these other narrative podcasts from The Ringer. If you like true crime, you'll love The Wedding Scammer. It's the story of a con man with many names and many griffs. If you're a reality TV fan, check out An American Scandaval, a look at the infamous affair that dominated the zeitgeist. And if you're into film history, try out a show I hosted called Do We Get to Win This Time?

It's about Vietnam War movies. Turns out, history and Hollywood are way more connected than you might think. Thanks for listening. super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. On the evening of December 4th, 2014, less than two weeks after the discovery of a crippling cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, company employees gathered on a studio parking lot to dance. It had been a rough few days for the Sony staffers. Their computer system had been hacked, their personal data had been stolen,

and on top of all that, they were possibly under threat from North Korea. So you can't blame those employees for wanting to blow off some steam and jump around at the company's annual holiday party. Earlier in the day, before the festivities started, Sony's two high-profile leaders,

Michael Linton and Amy Pascal, had addressed the crowd. Linton thanked the employees for their perseverance, telling them, this is a family I feel even more proud to be a part of. But Pascal took a more

rah-rah approach. On any Friday night, she said, we can shift the world on its axis. And if anybody wants to stop us, they're going to have to do a whole lot more than breach a firewall. It was a bold declaration. In fact, it kind of sounded like a dare.

But by that point, the damage was already done. The attackers had siphoned the company's secrets. And in the days and weeks ahead, the revelations from the Sony hack would shift the movie world on its own axis. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Brian Raftery, and this is The Hollywood Hack. Chapter 2, All Hope Will Leave You. At the time Sony was throwing its big shindig, Marisa McGrath Liston was in New York City, along with several of her colleagues. You met Marisa in our last episode. Back in 2014, she was a senior publicity executive at Sony. And that week,

amid all the hacking madness, she traveled to New York to help promote the studio's big holiday family film, Annie, a remake of the hit musical. The studio had flown in more than 50 journalists and brought in stars like Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. This is a well-orchestrated production of movement of over a 100 people, right? Yeah. Moving them, and so, you know, nothing's stopping at that point. Like everyone else at Sony, Marisa had spent the last two weeks dealing with one hard knock after another. A quick recap.

In late November, a group calling itself Guardians of Peace had hacked into Sony's computer servers, stealing hundreds of thousands of internal documents. That was followed by a series of leaks. Salaries, social security numbers, even a few unreleased Sony movies, including Annie, which everyone at the studio was hoping would be a hit. For Marisa and her co-workers, it was a lot to deal with. You were just trying to get through the day. To make matters worse, there have been a series of reports linking North Korea to the attack.

Like this December 2nd update from the BBC. A senior U.S. official has confirmed investigators are considering whether North Korea's cyber army was behind the hack. It bears striking similarities to another attack on South Korean systems last year, which knocked out television stations and ATMs. North Korea hadn't claimed responsibility for the hack, but the country's government was furious about one of Sony's upcoming films, The Interview. It's about two Americans,

played by James Franco and Seth Rogen, who attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He must die. That's the American way. How many times can the U.S. make the same mistake? As many times as it takes. North Korea had been protesting the interview long before the hack was even discovered.

When a teaser trailer for the movie was released in the summer of 2014, an angry North Korean official called the interview, an act of war. The country even filed a complaint with the United Nations about the film, demanding that the U.S. stop its release. Marisa, like so many other Sony employees, wasn't sure what to believe.

Had North Korea, a nuclear-armed communist country nearly 6,000 miles away, actually targeted a movie studio? And if so, what else would it be willing to do? As the pieces started unfolding and the speculation was unfolding, and then it started becoming and feeling more real, is this really North Korea and they have a missile aimed at our lot and I should be really scared? That question would become even more pressing on the afternoon of Friday, December 5th. At the time, Marisa and several co-workers were at the Crosby Street Hotel in Manhattan,

where journalists had gathered to interview the stars of Annie. We were in what was the green room, which is kind of where everybody gathers to watch the talent doing the interviews on the screen. So there probably was about 10 of us in there. Marisa was using a BlackBerry that could still access her Sony email. And at one point, she looked down and saw a strangely worded message that was just hitting employees' inboxes. I am the head of GOP. Who made you worry? Just a reminder that GOP stands

for Guardians of Peace, the group that claimed credit for breaking into Sony's computers. The hackers said they were planning on, quote, removing Sony Pictures, whatever that means. And they claimed the cyber attack was just a small part of their scheme. It's your fault if you think this crisis will be over after some time. All hope will leave you and Sony Pictures will collapse. The hackers then called upon Sony's employees

to turn against the studio, offering this chilling demand. Make your company behave wisely. Please sign your name to object the false of the company at the email address below if you don't want to suffer damage. If you don't, not only you but your family will be in danger. I remember there was a panic that set in in that room. Oh my God, did you get this? Did you get this? Now, there was no way to verify that this message had actually come from the hackers,

and it was hardly what you'd call a coherent threat. But until then, there'd never been any mention of hurting the employees' families. The moment that it became personal was that very specific email for us. At the time, Marisa had a two-year-old back home in L.A., and she was pregnant with twins. She'd also brought her husband along for the work trip. I just remember being that thoughtful of, you know, oh my God, maybe he shouldn't be

with me. She called her husband to let him know about the threat. Then, Marisa went back to work. And meanwhile, you know, you're looking at these screens and you've got Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx and they're doing interviews to promote a movie and it felt really weird

and yet it was business that had to be attended to. There'd be plenty more business for Marisa and her colleagues to attend to in the days ahead. Sony was still recovering from the attack, but it wasn't like the company could just shut down for a while. It needed to get Annie into theaters, no matter what. So the company hired extra security for the movie's premiere. And before the actors hit the red carpet, Marisa and her team briefed the stars on how to talk about the hack. Or rather, how to not talk about it. We had only prepared a couple talking points,

and they were very bland and deflective, as they should be, because Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx should not have to be commenting on it. There were a couple talking points about if they are asked about the Sony hack, you know, a deflection of, I know it's being investigated at the highest level. I'm, you know, trusted in my colleagues in Sony and the government to figure out, you know, what is going on here. As it turned out, one of the stars of the interview was also in New York that week, hosting Saturday Night Live. Ladies and gentlemen, James Franco. During his monologue, Franco joked about the hack.

And I know eventually they're going to start leaking out stuff about me. So before you hear it somewhere else, I thought it'd be better for you to hear it from me. So, before you hear it somewhere else, I thought it'd be better for you to hear it from me. Soon you'll know that my email is cuter than DaveFranco at AOL.com. Then he brought out Rogan, who told Franco the situation had escalated, and that

the hackers had stolen private photos from their phones. Oh my god, which photos? All of them. You mean like the one I took of you in your dressing room? Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the control top pantyhose. Those jokes would soon feel uncomfortably prophetic. Franco's SNL gig took place on Saturday, December 6th. And at that moment, new materials stolen during the Sony hack were slowly spreading online. Memos, spreadsheets, HR files.

No one had found James Franco's email address yet, but they had discovered lots of potentially damaging stuff to dig through. Some of the materials that emerged at first were pretty harmless, honestly. I mean, they were embarrassing, sure, but they were survivable. Early on, Gawker found a series of leaked Sony PowerPoint slides

that looked as though they'd been prepared by a studio research team. The slides were at once high-energy and low-tech, featuring fonts that hadn't been seen since 1997, and lots of peppy corporate speak, like in this report about one of Sony's big movie franchises. Teens loved the Smurfs. 58% of teens described the Smurfs. 58% of teens described the Smurfs' language as funny.

Teens were most likely to classify the Smurfs as cool. The rest of those slides were equally ridiculous. One included a warning that the 2013 sci-fi drama Elysium, a movie about poverty, injustice, and overpopulation, should, quote, avoid sociopolitical themes. Another slide suggested making a, injustice, and overpopulation should, quote, avoid sociopolitical themes. Another slide suggested making a, quote, cool internet meme to promote Adam Sandler's new grownup sequel. The same day those PowerPoints appeared,

Gawker dug into the contents of a leaked file named Sony 2012 Comments. It was full of complaints from Sony Pictures Entertainment employees about their own company, and some of their gripes sounded pretty familiar. There is a general blondness to the films we produce. Stop making the same safe, soulless movies.

We continue to be saddled with mundane, formulaic Adam Sandler films. Again, these documents didn't reveal high-value trade secrets, and they probably weren't going to end anyone's career. But they did provide a glimpse at how employees at one of the biggest movie studios in the world viewed their work, and their workplace. And they revealed that Hollywood, for all its glamour and smarts, could be just as uninspired or as unsatisfying as any other big industry. And while those outside of Sony found these kinds of materials amusing, or even insightful,

the steady drip, drip, drip of stolen documents had become a nightmare for the company's employees, especially Amy Pascal. Here she is in 2015, discussing the early days of the hack with journalist Tina Brown. They're at a conference called Women of the World, which brought together several high-profile female leaders in San Francisco. This was the first time Pascal spoke publicly about the early days of the hack. I ran this company, and I had to worry about everybody who was really scared. So people were really scared.

All of their social security was out there. People worried about their passports. People were worried about all kinds of things. Pascal declined to speak with me for this series. And in fact, during the last decade, she's barely commented publicly on the hack at all. So this interview provides a rare glimpse of how she first reacted to the hack. And for Pascal, there was one particular worry

in the back of her mind. And I kept calling going, they don't have our emails, right? Tell me they don't have our emails, right? Tell me they don't have our emails. No, no, no, no, no. But they did have their emails. Something like 175,000 of them.

That was a bad moment. Because you know what you write in emails. And soon, so would the rest of the world. Weirdly, one of the most crucial figures of the entire 2014 Sony hack scandal turned out to be somebody who'd been dead for more than 2,000 years. Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen played by Elizabeth Taylor in a big-budget 1963 biopic. The way to prevent war is to be ready for it. In the months before the hack, Pascal had been at war over a new Cleopatra film for Sony. It would star Angelina Jolie and be produced by Scott Rudin,

an infamous figure within the worlds of both Hollywood and Broadway. Rudin had a ton of Tonys and an impeccable IMDb. Clueless, The Truman Show, The Royal Tenenbaums, No Country for Old Men. Just decades of hits. Rudin was powerful and mean, like throwing stuff at his assistants kind of mean. His behavior would later be exposed in publications like The Hollywood Reporter and New York Magazine. That coverage prompted Rudin to issue an apology in 2021, in which he said he was, quote, profoundly sorry for the pain he'd caused others. But back in 2014, in which he said he was, quote, profoundly sorry for the pain he'd caused others.

But back in 2014, Rudin still had a deal with Sony, where he'd produce movies like The Social Network and Moneyball. He and Pascal had known each other for decades. She was one of the first people Rudin thanked when he accepted a Golden Globe for The Social Network in 2012. Amy Pascal and I started together as kids 30 years ago. We've spent our entire lives waiting for a night like this. Thank you for everything, for the friendship. But as the stolen Sony documents revealed, the Cleopatra movie had put their friendship to the

test. On Sunday, December 8th, the day after Franco's SNL gig, a massive cache of Pascal's private emails was discovered online. Right away, journalists zeroed in on one of the juiciest parts, the long fight over Jolie's film. In a series of emails, Pascal and Rudin argued about virtually every aspect of the Cleopatra movie. The script, the budget, even Angelina's period-specific hairstyle. That one really stumped Rudin. First, I thought bald, but then I was sitting at home during the night and I couldn't sleep because of it, so now I think shaved. Or possibly a fade, like kid and play. And the more Pascal and Rudin

discussed the movie, the more heated their exchanges became. Pascal grew irritated when she felt Rudin was dodging her requests. Have you forgotten how this works? We can't even schedule one ducking meeting. And Rudin was frustrated having to deal with all those requests in the first place. Let me remind you, I brought this material to you. Don't even think for a second and try to shit with me. These kinds of back and forths went on between Pascal and Rudin for months. And while their arguments get ferocious at times,

they're also kind of weirdly relatable. I mean, Pascal and Rudin are fighting over a gazillion dollar movie. But a lot of the time, their frustrations stem from the kinds of small but meaningful workplace annoyances we've all experienced. The feeling of being out of the loop, of being taken for granted, of people talking about us behind our backs. But no one really noticed that at the time. Instead, the headlines

focused on a tossed-off comment that Rudin made about Jolie. I'm not destroying my career over a minimally talented, spoiled brat. That one line would launch countless stories about the hack. Here was an Oscar-winning producer insulting an A-list actor, one who was supposedly his peer and collaborator. Not long after the Jolie email went public,

Rudin issued an apology. He said his comments were meant to be funny, but that they were in fact, quote, thoughtless and insensitive. Pascal, meanwhile, tried to repair her relationship with Jolie behind the scenes. As Pascal told Tina Brown in 2015, she reached out to the actor immediately. The first person I talked to was Angie after that email. I mean, yes, everybody understood because we all live in this weird thing together called Hollywood.

If we all actually were nice, it wouldn't work. But to those outside the weird thing called Hollywood, the Jolie emails demonstrated the kind of backstabbery that everyone knew happened in showbiz, but that few got to witness firsthand. And readers were now hungry for even more behind-the-scenes drama. So as journalists continued looking through the emails from that massive December 8th data dump, they realized there were plenty more stories to be found. We couldn't believe what we were reading.

That's Matt Bellany, the host of The Ringer's showbiz industry podcast, The Town. He was the executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter when the hack happened. There was a list of reporters that would get these very cryptic emails from hackers or others, and they would have files in them, and you would open it, and then all of a sudden you're like, holy shit, this is the employment file for every single employee at Sony Pictures.

These are the contracts for movies, stuff they never want you to see. These are emails from the top executives talking shit about their actors. Angelina Jolie wasn't the only star to get slammed in the company's emails. After Adam Sandler clashed with the studio over a movie based on the board game Candyland, Pascal sent an email to a co-worker calling the actor an asshole. She meant asshole, but you get the point. Then there was the Sony marketing

executive who called Kevin Hart, quote, a whore for wanting to be paid to promote his Sony movie on Twitter. When the Associated Press asked Hart to comment on the insult, the actor basically said, hey, this is how Hollywood works. This is the business. Things happen in the business. That's what makes it business. But not all the emails about actors were negative. In one exchange, a studio bigwig complimented Michael Fassbender's penis size. And sometimes, the stars themselves made cameos. When Jonah Hill learned of a possible crossover film featuring characters from both the Men in Black and Jump Street films, he emailed a zen-like message of approval. I think that's clean and rad and powerful.

Throughout December, new revelations from the emails were popping up seemingly every day. For journalists, the Sony hack, with its nonstop supply of big stars and big egos, was irresistible. To use movie terms, you know, it was a four-quadrant story. Everybody loved it. That's Andrew Wallenstein, who was editor-in-chief of Variety at the time of the hack. Here was a story that sort of checked off all the boxes in the sense that it was a very industry-substantive story, and it was also something that appealed to the consumer audience as well. Andrew would spend months overseeing Variety's coverage of the hack.

He'd have plenty of competition. The Sony story arrived right as legacy publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were being challenged by high-speed, high-metabolism outlets. Places like Gawker, BuzzFeed, Daily Beast. With so many journalists on the beat, there was a rush to find the most newsworthy bits from the hack. And some of those discoveries would resonate far beyond Hollywood. The Daily Beast discovered that Jennifer Lawrence's back-end pay for the 2013 film American Hustle, a movie made when Lawrence was pretty much the biggest female movie star in the world,

had been less than her male peers. Her co-star Amy Adams also received less compensation for the film, despite the fact that she'd been nominated for four Academy Awards. Pascal justified those disparities while talking to Tina Brown in early 2015. People want to work for less money, I'll pay them less money. I don't call them up and go, can I give you some more? In other words, to quote Kevin Hart, things happen in the business. That's what makes it business.

The truth is that what women have to do is not work for less money. They have to walk away. The news of Lawrence's pay disparity wasn't the only financial revelation from the hack. A Fusion article found evidence that one of Sony's highest-ranking female executives was paid nearly a million dollars less than her male counterpart. Another story revealed that the majority of the company's highest-paid employees were white men. Together, those discoveries would spark new conversations about pay inequity.

Conversations that would soon take center stage in Hollywood. And the Oscar goes to Patricia Arquette, boyhood. In March 2015, a few months after the Sony emails went public,

Patricia Arquette gave her best supporting actress speech, the one that inspired that famous gif of Meryl Streep and J.Lo cheering from their seats. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America. Later that same year, Lawrence addressed her own cameo in the Sony hacks. In an essay for the newsletter Lenny, she wrote about reading the emails and realizing that the, quote, lucky people with dicks had gotten more money than her. I didn't get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself.

That's not Jennifer Lawrence, by the way. That's my producer, Devin Baraldi. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn't want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don't need. Lawrence ended her essay with a reference to one of Scott Rudin's emails. The fact that he called Angelina Jolie a spoiled brat for making so many requests was, to Lawrence, just more proof of Hollywood's ingrained inequality.

For some reason, I just can't picture someone saying that about a man. But the conversations about Sony's paydays would soon be overshadowed by yet another bombshell email exchange between Pascal and Rudin. After the break, the fallout from the Sony hack goes all the way to the White House. It is good to be in L.A.

In November 2013, a year before the Sony hack, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the DreamWorks Animation Headquarters in Glendale, California. There's a natural connection between me and DreamWorks. I don't know if you know this, but my ears were one of the inspirations for Shrek. Obama was in town to promote a new economic plan and to stroke some showbiz egos. Entertainment is one of the bright spots of our economy. The gap between what we can do and what other countries can do is enormous. Yeah, that's worth cheering for.

On that same trip, Obama attended a breakfast with several Hollywood leaders, including Pascal. Beforehand, she and Rudin sent emails in which they speculated about what kinds of movies Obama watched. They were all films with black leads. Should I ask him if he liked Django, Pascal wrote, or The Butler, or Think Like a Man? I bet he likes Kevin Hart, Rudin replied. When those emails were later published by BuzzFeed, the backlash was immediate. Actor Zoe Saldana tweeted,

The emails also angered civil rights leader Al Sharpton. A few days after Pascal and Rudin's Obama conversation was published, Sharpton was interviewed on the streets of Manhattan by TMZ. Right now, Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains. The higher up it goes, the whiter it looks. Sharpton said the emails confirmed what he'd long suspected about Hollywood. There's no blacks with any real decision-making power. There's no diversity at the top. This could be a time to change Hollywood.

And he promised to tell Pascal how he felt when they met later that month in person. And I'm going to give her a lot of heck about the heck. Pascal and Sharpton held their summit in mid-December. By that point, she'd released a statement apologizing for the Obama emails. She described them as, quote, insensitive and inappropriate, and said they didn't reflect who she was. But that statement didn't stop the controversy from spreading all over TV.

On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon noted Pascal's apology to the president. In response, Obama said, oh, no worries, I secretly read those emails months ago. So let's just... Let's just call it even. In response, Obama said, oh, no worries. I secretly read those emails months ago. So let's just... And on The Late Show, David Letterman did a top 10 list of made-up Sony emails. Nicholas Cage said the script is terrible and he's in. We've run out of comic books. How about movies based on phone books? But to the employees working on the Sony lot, there was nothing funny about their private messages being up for grabs. I remember like coming home and my husband was asking, you know,

I was like, are you all right? And I said, yeah. That's Michael Fisk, the marketing executive we met last episode. And the next question is like, do I have to worry? You know, what's out there, right? You know, which is a legit question, you know, and, you know, and you, you kind of look back and you've, you kind of say, do I keep work, work and personal, personal? Michael kept his non-work emails in a separate account, but that wasn't the case for many of his Sony colleagues. You're exposed naked right there. Like, you know, what are people seeing, you know, and what can I do about it? And when you realize there's nothing you can do about it, you just have to be hopeful that you live a life that hopefully you have no regrets, you know? And I mean, I'm far from being pure and having no vices, but you just hope that you didn't say anything that would compromise your

own reputation. And for Pascal, the release of all those private emails was devastating. Here she is in 2015, talking about the fallout with Tina Brown. There was this horrible moment where I realized there was absolutely nothing at all that I could do about whether I'd hurt people, whether I'd betrayed people, whether I'd said things that I didn't mean. But by the time Pascal had that realization, it was too late.

Throughout December, the flow of hacked Sony data went from a trickle to a flood. By then, some employees were watching helplessly as their private information began spreading online. And so we would get alerts saying, OK, this information, your social security number, your telephone number, you know, your name and so on is out there on the dark web. That's Michael Fisk again. You'd also be told, like, how much it's being sold for.

And my data was sold for $25. And I was upset, like, in the sense of, like, oh, my God, is my worth only $25? I thought maybe my data is worth a little bit more. Even adjusted for inflation to 2024, that's not, yeah. That said, in this economy, I would maybe take $25 for my social security number. But then I also alerted the software companies like, oh my God, my data is there on the dark web for $25. Take the data down and stop it.

And they're like, we can't. It's on the web, we just can't. But you know about it now. That was cold comfort for many Sony employees. They couldn't stop their data from spreading online. And they couldn't prevent reporters from digging through their emails. I should note here that I invited Sony

to comment for this podcast. An invitation in the studio declined. But back in 2014, in the heat of the moment, some people at Sony had no problem speaking out about those hacked emails being published. Sony was calling people saying, this is theft. These are stolen documents. If you cover this information, you are participating in this theft. And it's unethical, if not illegal.

Matt Bellany again. Michael Linton, the CEO of Sony Pictures, was extremely upset about the coverage that they were getting. They found it very personally invasive, and they made those feelings known to us. Linton had dealt with his own embarrassing revelations from the hack, like when emails surfaced indicating he'd been in the running for a big job at New York University. Seeing those kinds of details

appear online clearly frustrated Linton. He made his feelings known at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in October 2015, nearly a year after the hack was discovered. You know, I don't think they were newsworthy, and I don't think it's appropriate to be publishing stolen emails the way that it happened. I should point out here that Linton declined to comment for this show.

But at the Vanity Fair summit, he talked about what it was like to have his own colleagues reading his personal emails. You know, you'd be sitting there at lunch, and it still happens, and they wander up to your table and say, oh, I just saw, just read through the correspondence you had with so-and-so. That was really interesting. And you're sort of thinking to yourself, really? That seems an odd way to spend an afternoon.

To Seth Rogen, the fact that people were perusing and publishing the Sony emails was more than just odd. It was infuriating. The actor expressed his frustrations during a December 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly. It's like Edward Snowden who's revealing like the government's spying on us. He felt the press was out of line for publishing emails from the hack and that we were all kind of out of line for reading them. The media argues like, oh, people find it interesting, so we have to print it. It's

like people find the stupidest in the world interesting. That doesn't mean you should print it. That same week, Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin published an op-ed in the New York Times, criticizing the press coverage of the hack. Sorkin had played a kind of accidental supporting role in the whole Sony drama. His screenplay, Steve Jobs, had almost been made at the studio, only to fall apart after arguments between Pascal and Rudin. Arguments that, of course, wound up getting leaked in the hack.

Sorkin was shocked that Sony's emails had been printed. He described the news outlets that published the emails as quote, morally treasonous and spectacularly dishonorable, and even accused them of doing the bidding of the Guardians of Peace. But Sorkin, who had written The Social Network, an entire movie about the internet, somehow hadn't grasped the fact that, in the digital era, everything about the Sony leak had become fair game. And not just because it generated clicks. To the reporters and editors covering the hack, this was a legit story. I mean, revelations about paydays and email feuds weren't up there with the Pentagon Papers. But Sony was a multi-billion dollar global corporation.

Didn't it deserve a little scrutiny? Not that everyone covering the story felt great about it. I've encountered some sticky wickets over the course of my 30-plus year career in journalism, but this was probably the stickiest. That's Variety's Andrew Wallenstein again. There was a lot of agonizing about what was the right thing to do here. I mean, make no mistake,

we were played as pawns by the hackers, and that felt icky. But at the end of the day, it's about serving the public interest. And that is who we have to worry about first and foremost. My position as the news editor, and I discussed this with our editorial team, was that some of this stuff was newsworthy to us and to our audience. That's former Hollywood Reporter editor Matt Bellany again. You know, you could second guess some of the stuff we published, but I don't think we should

have ignored it. I don't think we should have not covered it. It was a pretty major event, and it revealed some pretty impactful and interesting business information about the studio. He's not wrong. There was a lot to learn from those emails about why a movie gets made or why it doesn't get made. The hacked emails weren't just like a fascinating look inside a studio. They were a fascinating look at a broader moment in Hollywood. That's Wall Street Journal editor Ben Fritz. While researching Sony for his 2018 book, The Big Picture, Ben went through every single document released during the hack.

Tens of thousands of them. Emails, memos, budgets. A very detailed snapshot of how Hollywood worked in the mid-2010s. Was there any particular nugget or subject that you got kind of sucked into while doing the research? I believe, like, there was this great marketing memo on Unaware about how all the things they wanted to do to hide the fact that M. Night Shyamalan

was the director of After Earth. You might remember After Earth from our last episode. It was that Will Smith sci-fi drama that Sony had hoped would launch an entire multimedia universe. The studio spent more than $130 million to make the movie. But After Earth was a tough sell. The film's director, M. Night Shyamalan, was in a bit of a slump. And though Smith was billed as the star of After Earth, he mostly played a supporting role.

With all that in mind, Sony had to somehow convince moviegoers to see After Earth. And the memo Ben found laid out the studio's plans. With all that in mind, Sony had to somehow convince moviegoers to see After Earth. And the memo Ben found laid out the studio's plans. And the two key things were, how do we hide the fact that M. Night Shyamalan directed this? Because at the time, he was ice cold. And how do we hide the fact that Will Smith isn't really in this movie? There were plenty more behind-the-scenes details in those documents. A lot of it was inside baseball stuff.

Brainstorming notes, script feedback, things like that. But those kinds of exchanges could have a big impact on a movie. Like the 2015 football drama Concussion, again starring Will Smith. In that film, he plays Bennett Amalu, a real-life Nigerian-American doctor who investigated the effects

of head injuries on players. A human being will get concussed at 60 Gs. A common head-to-head contact on a football field? 100 Gs. The New York Times found an email from the hack indicating that some, quote, unflattering moments for the NFL were taken out of an early concussion script.

Another message said a lawyer had removed, quote, most of the bite from the movie. Then there was the case of Sony's most valuable player, Spider-Man. As you might remember from our last episode, the studio's most recent Spidey film, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, had been a major letdown.

As a result, Sony was scrambling to fix its billion-dollar franchise. You know, they weren't doing a good job with it at the time, and what was going to become of it was certainly to movie fans around the world was the thing they cared most about. Those fans found plenty of Spidey stuff in the hack, like an agreement between Sony and Marvel stipulating that Peter Parker had to be white and straight. There were even emails in which Sony kicked around the idea of partnering with Marvel

and bringing Spider-Man to the MCU, a once unthinkable proposition that eventually became a reality. Yet some of the most fascinating conversations in the Sony documents were about projects with much lower stakes. Projects like the ALF movie. Quick backstory. In the early 2010s, after all those Smurfs films, Sony began developing an animated film starring Alf.

If you don't remember Alf, it was an 80s sitcom about a wise-cracking alien who crash-lands on Earth, wears big Hawaiian shirts, and tries to eat a cat. This was a huge show for a while, and I'm sure there's probably a 200-episode recap podcast about it somewhere. Anyway, the Sony emails chronicle the life and death of the ALF movie.

You can find emails about whether an ALF movie is worth making in the first place. Maybe, if it's just good, and we can make great marketing materials from it, people will go. Then there are the emails getting into the nitty-gritty of ALF's public appeal. I think of ALF more like Shrek. Caustic and sarcastic, and someone who says it like it is, and not as much like Smurfs. Of course, the decision to make the ALF movie would come down to one person, Amy Pascal. By the 2010s, she desperately needed some new franchises. And if an ALF movie became

a hit, that could mean multiple sequels. But when Pascal chimes in about an early screenplay, it's clear she still has some reservations. ALF's funny. The villain's great. My question is, is the brand as good as the script is? I should point out that Pascal's emails often had typos, which we cleaned up here. Anyway, the back and forth over ALF goes on for a long time. Eventually, one of the film's producers emails Pascal, asking if they can speed things up.

We have wasted over a year by now. And then, after years of debating and developing, the ALF movie just dies. You can see its demise in real time, thanks to a frustrated email Pascal sends to herself one night in early 2014. I don't care about ALF. I don't know what I'm rooting for. She goes on, listing her many problems with the script, and with ALF in general. What are the rules of ALF's world? It's just all too sloppy.

He understands tax returns, but not toilet paper? Finally, Pascal asks an existential question, one that seemingly dooms Alf for good. What are we going for here? I don't even know. After that message, the Alf email trail pretty much goes cold,

and the movie itself never materialized. There are countless threads like this buried in the Sony emails. You can see all the negotiating and nudging and 24-hour diplomacy you need just to work in Hollywood. And you can see how ridiculously hard it is to make a movie, especially at Sony, where executives are trying to keep up with the Marvels and Transformers and Star Warses of the world. But you can't talk about all the interesting stuff found in the Sony hack without acknowledging that all these inside baseball details, they

came with a huge cost. People weren't just having their private emails scrutinized by strangers. They were also worrying if a foreign power was out to hurt them or their families. To those on the outside, the Sony hack was a circus. But to the company's thousands of employees, it was a full-on crisis. I know a lot of people found it funny, but let me tell you, it wasn't funny for any of us. And it's painful to see your friends and colleagues exposed in such a sort of brutal, demoralizing way. That's former Sony marketing and publicity executive Andre Caracco, whom we met last episode. And we were all drowning. Everyone was on pins and needles. That's something you said, even if innocuous, might, you know, come back to haunt

you in some horrible way, or you're walking across the lot and, you know, you're concerned you're going to see someone whose information was recently released or something new and appalling is going to drip out by the time you get to the other side of the lot. So what was it like for you to go through this on like a day in, day out basis? Well, there was little time for sleep because you just didn't know when the next sort of shoe was going to drop. So you put your head on the pillow, not knowing what you're going to wake up to. But even with so many unknowns,

Sony still had to get their big R-rated holiday comedy into theaters. On the evening of Thursday, December 11th, Sony held a premiere for the interview at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. Despite all the controversy and the constant bad news the studio was determined to celebrate the fact that the movie was still coming out.

James Franco would be there as would Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg the film's co-directors. Seth and Evan's premiere parties I've been to many of them and they're always a lot of fun. That's Dan Sterling co-writer of the interview. There's all kinds of stars there and pills and things that at the time I was always excited to take.

But given all the tension surrounding the film, the premiere for the interview would be a lot more subdued. Members of the press would be there, but no interviews were allowed on the red carpet maybe that was just due to security concerns or maybe it was because by that point the studio worried that one offhand comment or joke could make the situation even worse with all that in mind the guest list was kept small and so was the after party still dan was excited this was a huge night the world premiere of his first movie. He brought along his mom and his childhood best friend. We rode up in the big SUV and then my publicist met me there

and led me, you know, onto the red carpet and all these things. Then Dan got a call from a longtime industry friend he'd invited to the premiere. She told him, Hey, my publicist is telling me to maybe not go. She thinks it's going to get bombed. I was like, oh, that's kind of a bummer. And there was definitely a weird energy there. Dan's right.

By all accounts, it was an unusual premiere. Outside, some reporters got into a scuffle with the LAPD, who tried to push them down the block. And one guest was chastised by a Sony staffer for talking to the press. Inside the theater, things were equally tense. Then when I walked into the theater where it was being shown, I saw that Amy Pascal was in the back, sitting surrounded by either friends or

colleagues or whatever. And she was in tears. And I was like, that's not a great sign either. And understandably, because she had really taken this massive hit with the leaked emails and everything, just so much terrible shit had happened. And that was a bummer. So yeah, I started to feel like, oh, are we going to get bombed? In the lobby, attendees were told not to approach the stars. Instead, they were offered potato skins and pizza and invited to pose with a cardboard cutout of Randall Park as Kim Jong-un. Finally, right before the movie began, Rogan addressed the crowd, telling them, we just want to thank Amy Pascal

for having the balls to make this movie. As he and Goldberg left the stage, the packed theater roared. Have a good night! Have a good night, everybody! Despite all the worries, the premiere went off without a hitch. And a few days later, on December 15th,

Franco and Rogan appeared on Good Morning America. It was one of the first stops in what was supposed to be a week-long New York City press blitz for the interview, which was set to open on Christmas Day. Sitting on the GMA set, Franco wore a sweater and a distant expression as he sipped coffee. He looked like he'd either just gotten up or had never actually gone to bed.

So when George Stephanopoulos asked about the movie's depiction of North Korea, Rogan did most of the talking. It truly is a bizarre place. It almost is like a relic from another time. I mean, it's completely closed off. We don't honestly even know how much of what we read is true, and we probably will never know because we will never go there. That became especially clear not long after Rogan and Franco's GMA appearance.

On December 16th, Sony received yet another cryptic warning from the supposed hackers. This one actually mentioned the interview by name, and threatened to attack any theater that played it. We will clearly show it to you at the very time and place as the interview be shown, including the perimeter, how bitter fate those who seek fun and terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. And if that wasn't ominous enough? The world will be full of fear.

Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. If your house is nearby, you'd better leave. And then, one final screw you to the studio itself. All the world will denounce the Sony. After that warning, Rogan and Franco's press tour was done. What more was there to even talk about? The terrorists had already targeted Sony, and now they were setting their sights on the whole country.

In the final episode of The Hollywood Hack, the battle over the interview comes to a head, and those involved with the movie deal with the repercussions. And I started to feel more and more responsible and also feel like, did I ruin the studio and ruined Seth's career and ruined Amy Pascal's life and not to mention every person who's hacked email, you know.

The Hollywood Hack was reported and written by me, Brian Raftery. The executive producers of this podcast are Juliet Littman and Sean Fennessy. Story editing by Amanda Dobbins. The show was produced by me, Devin Baraldi, and Vikram Patel. Fact-checking by Dan Comer. Copy editing by Jack McCluskey.

Sound design by Devin Rinaldo. Mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. The music you hear in this series is from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Art direction and illustration by David Shoemaker. Thanks for listening.