The Big Picture - 3. Keep Your Distance | The Hollywood Hack

Episode Date: August 23, 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 3, the hackers attempt to halt the release of ‘The Interview’ by threatening to attack theaters—forcing Sony executives to make a difficult last-minute decision. After the dust clears, those involved with the hack reckon with its long-term consequences—both for themselves and for Hollywood. 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 want more narrative shows to binge on your way to work, or while you're cleaning your apartment, I have good news for you. The Ringer has a bunch to choose from. If you love pop culture, check out Just Like Us, a deep dive into the tabloid magazine era. Bennifer, Brangelina, Paparazzi, TMZ,

Just Like Us has it all. For a more modern take on the darker side of celebrity culture, try This Blew Up, a story about how social media invented a new category of fame, one that comes with its own drawbacks. Or maybe you just want a little more of me in your life. Well, if that's the case, there's Gene and Roger, in which I dive into the careers and legacies of legendary movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

Thanks for listening. By the end of 2014, the Sony lot had become Michelle Vio's home away from home. The good thing is that the lot is a small city. You want for nothing when you're on the lot. There are plenty of showers, there's plenty of food. Michelle is the former Sony IT executive we met in episode one. She and her colleagues would spend months trying to undo the damage caused by the cyberattack on Sony Pictures. They worked in shifts, sometimes bringing in cots so they could spend the night.

The hours piled up, as did the empty food containers. And the pizza place right across the street from the lot, I think that they gained a lot of business in the first couple of weeks. Getting Sony back online was a monumental effort. And it was all happening during a ridiculously stressful time for everyone working on the lot. Their computers had been destroyed, their information had been stolen, and their families had been threatened. Then, in mid-December, an anonymous message had appeared online,

threatening violence against theaters that showed Sony's controversial film, The Interview. The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001. It was a scary period. And Sony's employees were understandably on edge. Which is why, from time to time, Michelle and her colleagues took a few

breaks. We did little things like we made sure that we all were able to get to our hairdresser appointments. Because it's important. I mean, I don't know if it's so much for guys, but with women. Oh yeah, it is. Definitely. It's important that your hair look decent, because then you feel decent if your hair looks decent. Other things, you know, occasionally I would send them off to get a massage, or I would go get a massage. We just tried to really do some self-care as much as we possibly could within that craziness that we were going through. Ten years later, Michelle is still amazed by how her colleagues performed under pressure. One of the very few silver linings that came out of the hack was how everybody came together.

There were people who just basically sacrificed their time, their energy, blood, sweat, and tears. I reached out to dozens of former Sony employees while working on this podcast. Some of them echoed what Michelle said, that the hack, for all the chaos it caused, really did unite people at Sony. They looked back at the hack with, not fondness exactly,

but with a certain amount of pride at how they responded. But they were the exception. A lot of former Sony employees didn't want to talk about the hack on the record, and some didn't really want to talk at all. But even now, a decade later, they still remember what it was like being on the lot in late 2014, and how grim the mood was.

As one person told me, quote, "'The vibe was so fucked up. And all around the Sony lot, reminders of the hack were everywhere. Outside, lines of cars formed at the gates, where security guards checked badges and inspected vehicles. And inside, employees spotted these strangers walking around,

dressed in unusually formal attire. They were most likely FBI agents, investigating the attack on Sony's servers. For a lot of people at the studio, those last few weeks in December were a time of frustration and confusion. Once we got to like that time between like the 15th and Christmas, I would say that felt like that was the most tense moment for everybody. That's Marisa McGrath-Liston, the former Sony publicity executive we met in episode one. While some employees tried to ignore all the coverage Sony was getting,

the constant news stories, the talk show jokes, Marisa couldn't just turn things off. And obviously I watch late night because I'm a publicist and watching them make fun of it and getting laughs from the audience and all that kind of stuff. And then I wake up the very next morning and I'm driving to the Sony lot where I'm dropping my two-year-old daughter off at the Sony daycare and I have to comb through six security guards

who are manually taking my name down. And I'm like, is my daughter safe? And at a time when many Sony employees were at their lowest, there were posters all around the law promoting The Interview, the movie that had supposedly started this whole mess. It starred Seth Rogen and James Franco as two American journalists hired by the CIA to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The CIA would love it if you two could take him out. Take him out. Take him out? Like for drinks? No, no, no. Take him out. Take? Take him out. Take him out? Like, for drinks?

No, no, no. Take him out. Take out? Like, to dinner? Take him out to a meal? Take him out. As reports emerged that North Korea had hacked Sony as retaliation for the interview, some employees began to resent the film. They simply couldn't believe their professional and personal lives had been upended by a lowbrow comedy.

One former employee told me, as a joke, I think, that they would have happily given their life for a movie like The Social Network. But the interview? That didn't quite seem like a film worth dying for. Other Sony workers questioned the wisdom in greenlighting the interview to begin with. After all, here was a movie in which a real-life world leader dies in a violent, slow-motion explosion. Around the lot, there were people who thought the filmmakers had simply gone too far. But the truth is, Hollywood had been villainizing North Korea for years. Without worry and without repercussions.

No one involved with the interview could have guessed the extreme reaction the film would provoke. And nobody could have guessed how the long, strange ordeal of this movie, and of the Sony hack, would finally come to an end. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Brian Raftery, and this is The Hollywood Hack, Episode 3, Keep Your Distance. Before he helped create one of the most controversial movies of all time, Dan Sterling was hanging out with two of Sony's biggest stars, Seth Rogen and his filmmaking partner, Evan Goldberg. They had their own offices on the Sony lot and had already gotten the walls very drenched

in the special smell that they tend to leave in the offices that they work in. That's Dan, who's worked as a writer and producer on some of the biggest shows of the last 20 years. The Office, Girls, The Daily Show. When he first met Rogan and Goldberg in the early 2010s, Dan had just finished a screenplay about an unlikely romance between a journalist and a U.S. politician. That movie, Longshot, would take years to come together. In the meantime, Rogan and Goldberg, who'd made big Sony hits like Superbad and Pineapple Express, had another idea they wanted to kick around with Dan. They said, what if you were a journalist and you got an interview with Osama bin Laden?

Would you feel compelled to try to kill him or what, basically? So it was this what if kind of provocation. At the time, there was another comedy in the works involving bin Laden. So Dan started thinking of other potential villains for his movie. He eventually wound up at a bar, talking with a friend. He and I were always sounding boards for each other. I don't know that I ever helped him with anything. But he's like, oh, well, it should be North Korea.

And I was just like, oh, right, of course, that's great. And I felt completely fine at the time about poking as much fun as humanly possible at the regime. At the time, that regime was ruled by Kim Jong-il, the brutal dictator who'd led North Korea since the mid-1990s. Kim Jong-il was known for his love of movies. Seriously. He was also known for his desire to build up North Korea's nuclear arsenal.

But most Americans didn't pay much attention to Kim Jong-il until the early 2000s, when it was revealed that North Korea had secretly been testing their nukes. President George W. Bush condemned Kim Jong-il's regime in his 2002 State of the Union address. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens. In that same speech, Bush placed North Korea on equal footing with such combative countries as Iraq and Iran, branding them with an infamous nickname. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

In the eyes of the West, North Korea was no longer an obscure, closed-off nation. It was now seen as a full-on menace. And as the country's notoriety increased, filmmakers found themselves with a promising new bad guy. Hollywood has always loved easy heavies, the kinds of villains you can drop into an action movie and know the audience will instantly hate them. Russia, China, Germany, they'd been supplying a steady stream of big-screen enemies for decades. And in the 2000s, it would be North Korea's turn. The same year Bush gave that speech, James Bond, played by Pierce Brosnan, faced off against heavily armed North Koreans in Die Another Day. You will not live to see the day. All Korea is ruled by the North.

You and I have something in common. That was followed a few years later by the direct-to-video military drama Behind Enemy Lines 2. The threat of nuclear war. Satellite reconnaissance over North Korea shows an intercontinental ballistic missile. Our nation's future on the line. By the way, if you're thinking Behind Enemy Lines 2 sounds like something Dick Cheney would watch on his Xbox, just wait till I tell you the movie's full title. But no Hollywood movie took on North Korea and Kim Jong-il

as fiercely as the 2004 puppet comedy musical Team America World Police. You probably remember the film's anthemic theme song. Directed by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Team America depicts Kim Jong-il as a lonely and violent egomaniac, one who's planning a series of attacks around the globe. And the movie does all this in the most racially insensitive way possible. It will be 9-11 times 2,356. But Kim Jong-il's plans are foiled, and he dies a grisly death when he's impaled on a German helmet. For I am the great Kim Jong-il, and I am the greatest terrorist ever to have lived! Terrorize this.

Team America was the most high-profile takedown of Kim Jong-il. But it wasn't alone. He was a go-to punchline throughout the 2000s. Saturday Night Live, Mad TV, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, they all made fun of him. So did 30 Rock, which in 2011 had Margaret Cho play the leader posing as a weatherman. North Korea, everything sunny all the time, always good time. Beach party. Not long after that episode aired, in December 2011, Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack. There was so much mystery about his life and his death that no one knew his exact age. But he was quickly succeeded by his son Kim Jong-un,

who continued his father's mission of building up North Korea's nuclear arsenal. In April 2012, the country even conducted a highly publicized missile test. The test failed, but it made world leaders nervous about what Kim Jong-un might try next. Here's an ABC News report from that time. But there were already fears that the North Koreans would try to test another nuclear device, this time a uranium device. So everyone is bracing themselves for that development, George. They do not think this is over yet.

The more aggressive North Korea became on the international stage, the more threatening the country became on screen. In 2012, MGM released a remake of Red Dawn, the 80s hit about U.S. high school kids fighting off a Soviet invasion. The new Red Dawn was supposed to pit America versus China, but after shooting wrapped, some involved with the film had second thoughts about vilifying China, which had become a much-needed moneymaker for Hollywood. So, thanks to some touch-ups in post, the Red Dawn villains were digitally changed from Chinese to North Korean,

and the movie's opening credits now featured a montage of politicians and pundits attacking the Kim Jong-un regime. North Korea is like a spoiled child. North Korea is a danger to the world. What would North Korea possibly hope to gain? What will be the next step? Red Dawn was followed by the 2013 hit Olympus Has Fallen, in which North Korean forces attack the White House and even execute the vice president.

United States of America doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Who said anything about negotiating? If these portrayals of North Korea as a bloodthirsty and backwards country angered its leaders, they kept quiet about it. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only time North Korea registered any official objection to Hollywood was in 2005. That's when government officials asked the Czech Republic, where North Korea had an embassy, to ban Team America, a request that was quickly denied. The truth is, in the years leading up to the interview, Hollywood wasn't too worried about offending North Korea.

American films didn't play there, so it wasn't like the studios were going to lose paying customers. And despite North Korea's pursuit of nukes, its distance from the U.S., geographically, culturally, even kind of emotionally, made it feel far away. For filmmakers, North Korea was an easy target. Still, the idea of committing violence against a sitting world leader like Kim Jong-un, even in a movie, was a pretty ballsy decision. It had been done a few times before. Iraq President Saddam Hussein was assassinated in 90s comedies like Hot Shots Part II and the South Park movie.

And in 1988's The Naked Gun, a clumsy L.A. cop assaults several U.S. adversaries, including Ayatollah Khomeini and Muammar Gaddafi. I'm Lieutenant Frank Drebin, police squad. And don't ever let me catch you guys in America. But those films were cartoonish or actual cartoons. The interview would be a full-on critique of North Korea and its leadership, which is one of the reasons Dan Sterling wanted to make the movie in the first place.

You know, in my mind, I thought, well, the movie will be fun. Maybe people will love it and all that. But, you know, who knows? Maybe this will do something in North Korea. Very hubristic, very arrogant, foolish thought. By do something, you mean maybe people would get to them and they would sort of see what kind of regime they were living in?

Yeah, something like that. Something very grandiose and just very foolish and wrong. But I was younger. I was only in my early 40s. There were lots of reasons for Sony to say no to the interview. After all, Kim Jong-un was a wildly unpredictable figure. Who knew how he'd react? And besides, throughout the 2000s, political comedies were a tough sell.

American audiences didn't really care for them much anymore. And even the successful ones, like Borat, had caused plenty of controversy. No matter what, the interview was guaranteed to create some headaches. But Rogan and Goldberg were on a hot streak. controversy. No matter what, the interview was guaranteed to create some headaches. But Rogen and Goldberg were on a hot streak. And it's safe to say that no one saw these guys as political provocateurs. They made smart comedies about dumb people. So the idea that anyone would take the interview as cutting edge commentary, or a vicious attack on North Korea, seemed kinda unlikely. Besides, if the movie did wind up pissing people off,

well, Sony was used to that. In 2012, the studio had caused a political ruckus with Zero Dark Thirty, a thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Before the film's release, a handful of prominent U.S. senators, including Republican John McCain and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, wrote a strongly worded letter to Sony Pictures CEO Michael Linton. They claimed Zero Dark Thirty misrepresented the role of torture techniques

in finding Bin Laden, and that the studio had a, quote, obligation to make a correction. The controversy over Zero Dark Thirty lasted for months, but Sony refused to change the film, proof that the studio was willing to produce, and defend, troublesome movies. All of which may explain why executives at Sony responded so positively, and so quickly, film, proof that the studio was willing to produce and defend troublesome movies, all

of which may explain why executives at Sony responded so positively and so quickly when the writers and directors of the interview pitched the movie on the studio lot. Before we even had gotten our cars from the valet, we had already been told that it was a go. Wow. I mean, not a go like a green light, but like, go ahead and write the script. And so was there any kind of worries at all in the weeks afterward? Like, oh, by the way, this is an international leader we're going to kill in this movie.

Maybe we should think about it, or maybe we should change the name. Or was there any sort of creative notes at that point about any of that stuff? Well, first of all, at that time, it never occurred to me to use the real name. I had named him Kim Il-Hwan or something like that. I mean, it was obviously supposed to be very, very similar. But, so no, there was no concerns about any diplomatic issues at that time. Not long after turning in his script, in February 2013, Dan attended the annual Writers Guild Awards in Los Angeles.

That night, he won an award for his work on the show Girls. And afterward, as he was about to step into his limo, Dan was approached by a Sony executive, who told him the following. By the way, I meant to tell you, your movie's a go for this summer. It's going to star James Franco and Seth Rogen. And I was like, oh, wow.

And I took my trophy into the cup. I was like, for me, this was all huge, huge stuff. Oh, my God, I can't imagine. Just one fantasy after another. It was this great show business moment for me. That fall, Dan found himself in Vancouver, where the cast and crew had assembled to start filming the interview. That included Goldberg

and Rogan, the film's co-directors. The mood on the set was upbeat. Rogan's mom was even there for some of the filming. There was a scene where Seth had to be completely naked. He was being sort of attacked by dogs, and the way that they got the dogs to bark and lunge at him was to

put pepperoni up his ass. Not deep into the canal, but between his butt cheeks. And so there was Seth naked with lunch meat between his butt cheeks and dogs barking at him, and he was screaming for his life. And I was just howling, just tears of laughter streaming down my face. And I just turned to his mother and I said, it is so funny when horrible things happen to your son. By this point, the script for the interview had undergone a major change.

Instead of featuring a fictitious villain... We had gotten permission to make it Kim Jong-un. And had that been your idea, the studio's idea, or...? It was not my idea. It was suggested to us. It was suggested to us. This is best, that's all I want to say. However it happened, Sony was now committed to a movie

that calls out one of the world's most notorious leaders, Kim Jong-un, who'd be played in the film by Randall Park, and whose head would be blown off in slow motion during the film's climax. Did anyone raise a flag at that point during production? No, nobody did. Just a reminder that I reached out to Sony to ask about the hack, but they chose not to comment. And I reached out to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg,

who also declined to participate. But I did ask Dan if, in hindsight, he wished they'd stuck with the idea of using a fictitious North Korean leader for the interview. I certainly think, in retrospect, that's probably what should have happened. Then the question is, would the film have been as edgy? I don't know, but... And would that have even been enough? We probably should not have done that. I want to point something out

here. I'm not blaming the people who made the interview for pursuing a far-out, potentially dangerous idea. Those are my favorite kinds of ideas. And I agree with Dan. A version of the interview without Kim Jong-un would have been pretty toothless. Maybe even pointless. It's also worth noting that, in the summer of 2014, after North Korea voiced objections to the interview's first trailer, Sony did reach out to U.S. officials to gauge whether or not the company should be worried by North Korea's reaction. Linton discussed the studio's efforts during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in late 2014.

We did take it seriously. We went to the people who we thought were most expert in the area, people in the U.S. government, people in various think tanks, and inquired as to whether or not this would be a problem. And the feedback from those experts was pretty positive. After watching a rough cut of the interview,

one analyst from the RAND Corporation, a massive defense industry think tank, even told Sony that if the movie leaked into North Korea, the interview could inspire citizens there to rethink their affection for Kim Jong-un. Still, by the summer of 2014, at least one key Sony executive was getting nervous about the interview, Kazuo Hirai, the Tokyo-based CEO of Sony Corp. After seeing the film, he told the studio's American executives they needed to tone down Kim Jong-un's death scene. Hirai had plenty of reasons not to provoke North Korea, a country that's separated from Japan by fewer than a thousand miles. The

two nations have a history of tense relations, going back decades. And earlier in 2014, North Korea had tested medium-range missiles that had landed in the Sea of Japan. So Hirai asked Amy Pascal to convince Rogan and Goldberg to make the film's ending less gory. That led to a long back and forth between Pascal and the filmmakers. She emailed Rogan, telling him it was the first time in 25 years that her Sony bosses had asked her to change a movie. No one has backed you more than I have, and I am trying to do that now in a very peculiar situation. She also offered suggestions as to how Rogan might make the scene less offensive. I hate doing this, but maybe there are a few less fleshy parts that spurt out of the fireball, or maybe it's more charred than pink? This sounds ridiculous, I know. The ensuing back and forth took months,

long enough that Pascal eventually decided to push the interview's opening date from October to December, a request she made as part of an all-caps email thread to other Sony executives. Just move interview ASAP! We need Seth to make all the film changes and then pray Kaz is comfortable. I don't know how many things one movie can survive. That date change gave the filmmakers some wiggle room, but they still had to edit and re-edit Kim Jong-un's death scene to make it less gnarly. At one point in September 2014, Rogan sent an email informing the Sony executives of the latest changes.

We took out three out of four of the face embers, reduced the hair burning by 50%, and significantly darkened the chunks of Kim's head. More tweaks followed until finally, on September 29th, Pascal wrote that they'd reached a compromise. The interview would still end with Kim Jong-un dying in a burst of flames and blood. All of it scored to an acoustic version of Katy Perry's hit, Firework. But with the 11th hour changes, Kim Jong-un's death scene would be a bit less gory. And that was enough to satisfy Pascal.

I need one night without dreaming about head explosions. But I am damn happy. Within a few months, the interview would be ready to hit theaters. If there were any willing to show it. On Friday, December 19th, Michael Linton was in New York City, getting ready for his first TV interview since the hack had been discovered. He had a lot of explaining to do. It had been yet another wild week on the Sony lot.

A few days earlier, that ominous message had appeared online, threatening violence at theaters that showed the interview. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. Afterward, the Department of Homeland Security had released a statement saying there was no credible intelligence

regarding an attack. But theater owners were in a tough spot. The interview was set to open on Christmas Day, close enough that some theaters had already announced showtimes. Now, theater owners had to make a decision. Should they pull the interview? Or should they risk playing it, knowing that some customers might be too scared to go to the movies?

They didn't waste too much time deliberating. Less than 24 hours after that warning appeared, the four biggest movie chains in the country, AMC Theaters, Carmike Cinemas, Regal Entertainment, and Cinemark, announced they were pulling the interview from their theaters. Sony's big holiday comedy had just been kicked off thousands of screens. In retrospect, what happened next seems inevitable. Cue the Entertainment Tonight theme song.

Sony announced it was scrapping the interview in a statement this afternoon, quote, we are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie. According to one person I spoke with at Sony, the plan wasn't to cancel the film's release altogether. Instead, the studio was just hitting pause, so that executives could figure out a way to get the film to viewers. Still, in all the coverage over the movie, that point was lost on the public. And so, not long after the decision to yank the interview hit the news, Linton flew overnight to New York to explain the studio's decision on CNN and to take some of the public pressure off Pascal. This was back when a primetime cable news interview had a much bigger reach than it does now,

and it would give Linton his best chance yet to explain the studio's decision-making process to the public. But Linton's day hadn't gone as planned. For starters, hours before the taping, the FBI publicly confirmed that North Korea was the prime suspect behind the hack. Then, while Linton was sitting in a CNN green room, Barack Obama appeared on a TV monitor. Linton watched as the president kicked off his year-end press conference by criticizing Sony's decision.

I am sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake. I wish they had spoken to me first. He went on to say that the cancellation of the interview set a dangerous precedent. We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States. Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like.

Obama didn't mention anything about the theater owners pulling the movie, a decision that had all but forced Sony's hand. Instead, he focused on the studio itself, saying the decision had been downright unpatriotic. You know, that's not who we are. That's not what America's about. Linton was let down by Obama's comments. According to a Vanity Fair account of the hack, he'd spoken to someone at the White House just a few days earlier and assumed the president was going to support the studio. And he wasn't the only one hurt by the president's remarks.

Back on the Sony lot, employees had gathered to watch the press conference. Michelle Veo was sitting with about 20 or so co-workers when Obama accused their company of making a mistake. And the second he said that, I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. And I'm a huge, I was a huge Obama supporter. A decade later, Michelle says she understands that Obama was simply speaking out against censorship. But at the time, his words hurt.

There we were working 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and then the president throws you under the bus. It's like, it was pretty brutal. Elsewhere on the lot, Andre Caracco, the former marketing and publicity executive we met in episode one, was watching the conference in his office, surrounded by co-workers. And there was just a sadness, I think, that fell over everyone, knowing that this was a spotlight we didn't ask for, we didn't want. But Andre also says that, for him and his colleagues, Obama's comments were kind of inspirational, that his words made them want to prove to the world that Sony could get

through this whole mess. There was a determination amongst the core group, certainly in marketing, that I was exposed to to say, okay, well, there's no way around it. This fucking sucks. Like, this is crazy shit. There's just no way around it. But this too shall pass. We will do everything we can to get through this.

But before that could happen, Michael Linton had to explain Sony's reaction to the hack to CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria. And of course, Zakaria also had to ask about the president's criticisms of Sony. Were you disappointed in what you heard today? I would be fibbing to say I wasn't disappointed. I, you know, the president and I haven't spoken. I don't know exactly whether he understands the sequence of events

that led up to the movies not being shown in the movie theaters. And therefore, I would disagree with the notion that it was a mistake. Linton said that Obama had been misinformed, that Sony didn't actually have the power to pull the interview. We do not own movie theaters. We cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters. Linton said he had no regrets about Sony greenlighting the film. I think we would have made the movie again.

Knowing what I know now, we might have done something slightly differently, but I think a lot of events have overtaken us in a way that we had no control over the facts. And Linton made sure to emphasize something else during that interview. Namely, that Sony hadn't let the terrorists win. We did not cave, we did not back down, and we continued in that pursuit right up until the end. But those words couldn't change the perception that Sony had folded to a foreign power.

And Obama wasn't the only one frustrated by the cancellation of the interview. People were outraged. For a while there, nothing was more patriotic than condemning Sony for being unpatriotic. There were complaints on Fox News, of course. This is about free speech, and you know what's going to come next. Chinese are going to weigh in, the Russians are going to weigh in, anyone with a grievance is going to weigh in.

Terrible precedent, and Sony led the parade in cowardice. But there was also frustration about the decision on CNN. Because this sets a precedent. I mean, the next time a foreign government is unhappy with the content of a movie, they can just send a few cyber attackers over. And across the country, people saw Sony's decision as extreme.

Here's a report from a local TV station in Milwaukee. Outside this Marcus Cinema, moviegoers are taking issue with the censorship. I think a lot of people take things way too seriously. I mean, we go to work. We have enough to worry about. Disappointment in Sony was so widespread and so bipartisan that for once, even Jimmy Kimmel and Megyn Kelly were on the same page. I think really the message has to come from the American people to stand up and say, you can do what you're going to do,

but we're going to do what we're going to do. It was sort of the way people went out and were urged to buy stock after 9-11, just to send a message in their own way that this is who we are and we're not going to be shut down. I agree with you. I hope they make the movie available. For Dan Sterling, the screenwriter we met at the start of this episode,

the events of the final weeks in December, the 9-11 threat, the leaked emails, the confirmation of this episode, the events of the final weeks in December, the 9-11 threat, the leaked emails, the confirmation of North Korea's involvement, had led to a mix of anxiety and guilt. By this point, many of his collaborators on the film had gotten bodyguards, and Dan was starting to wonder if he should too. So he ended up on the phone with an Israeli security expert. I'm going to do a terrible Israeli accent, so it's fine. I'm Jewish. Don't at me or whatever they say.

But he was like, oh, yeah, listen, you are fine. Nobody cares. You're the writer. You're the intellectual. Nobody cares about you. And I'm like, well, are you sure? Like, what about my bank accounts?

Couldn't they hack me? I'm telling you, nobody cares about you. You don't need anything. The next insult for Dan? Watching as billboards for the interview came down all around Hollywood. That was just brutal. But by that point, I was really worried that I'd ruined Seth's career and ruined a studio. And I wasn't so much worried about my own career until I was on with Linda Wertheimer on NPR. And she was interviewing me and she said, do you think you'll ever work again?

And I was like, oh, well, I hadn't thought I wouldn't. It hadn't occurred to me. Now it's occurring to me. Thanks, NPR. Now panicking radio. I asked Dan about the guilt he experienced during this whole time. I started to feel more and more responsible and also feel like, did I just cause, was this my fault? Did I ruin the studio and ruin Seth's career and ruin Amy Pascal's life and not to mention every person who's hacked email, you know. For nearly 25 years,

Toby Leonard has worked at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville, Tennessee. The Belcourt was built in 1925, making it the oldest standing movie theater in Nashville. It's got three screens, a devoted audience, and a pretty simple mission statement. What we do is we show movies every day, day in, day out. Old movies, new movies, mostly good movies.

That's Toby, who's been the director of programming at the Bellcourt since 2004. The Bellcourt specializes in new art house and indie films, as well as Hollywood classics. It's not a place where you'd expect to find an expensive, star-driven studio comedy like The Interview. This wouldn't, you know, on paper fit any sort of art house, independent crossover type of film. I mean,

you know, it's a pretty basic comedy. I was going to say something a little... I mean, well, look, it's a comedy where Kim Jong-un shits his pants. I mean, it's not exactly, you know, like Pan's Labyrinth. Yeah. Okay, yeah, you said it better than I could have.

For the 2014 holiday season, the Belcourt was planning to hold a retrospective of Frank Capra films, including It's a Wonderful Life. But a few days before Christmas, an organization called Art House Convergence, which at the time represented about 250 screens, mounted an effort to show the interview at indie theaters. In a letter to Sony, the group said, we understand there are risks involved, but they claimed that releasing the movie would, quote, keep our film industry free of restriction, censorship, and violent intimidation. Soon, Toby was hearing from people

he knew at theaters across the country. They were feeling each other out to see if playing the interview was a good idea. And most of them were on board. So as this situation developed with the interview becoming sort of this possible rallying point for independent theaters who had the

wherewithal and the will to show the film. Did it feel like a rallying point for you? Can I just say it felt like one big goof? There are people, I had friends posting like, you know, were memes a thing in 2014? Because it felt like they're posting like images of our theater with a mushroom cloud above it, you know, trying to trying to get a rise out of me or something. But it didn't feel threatening, really. It just kind of felt like something fun to do. Finally, on December 23rd, Sony reversed course, announcing that the interview would now open on Christmas Day.

The film would also be available to rent or buy online, thanks to a last-minute deal Sony struck with Google, making the interview the first-ever big studio movie to debut at theaters and on streaming on the same day. Later, Rogan and Goldberg would tell Vanity Fair that the studio's change of heart was influenced, in part, by Obama, that being scolded by the president, quote, gave Sony the momentum

they needed to get the movie out there. More than 300 theaters across the U.S. committed to showing the interview, including the Bell Court. It all made for a hectic few days. Toby had about 48 hours to shift the theater schedule around. Meanwhile, as news got out that

the Bell Court would be showing the movie, emails began pouring in. Toby read a few of them for me. Good luck with the interview. We're all behind you. That's the sentiment of a few of these subject header. You made me proud, Toby. I'm certain that the interview is probably not a film I'd ever care to see or even needs to be seen by anyone until all this crap happened. Congratulations.

Those weren't the only messages he received. Before the interview opened, a Nashville FBI agent visited the theater. He looked around, talked a lot about cybersecurity. You know, he said, let us know if there's anything you need. It didn't feel in any way serious. It felt more like a concerned citizen who probably comes to see movies here. Finally, on Christmas Day,

Toby headed to the bell court for the first screening of the interview. The line was around the block. The vibe was really, it was like, it was pretty strong for being in the morning. Toby and a coworker came out to introduce the film and to throw some t-shirts into the crowd. The audience went wild.

It felt like being a hype man for a film I hadn't seen, or you know, which I hadn't. And yeah, folks were just really live. It got even livelier when Toby gave his final send-off to the crowd. I said, America! And the whole audience goes, fuck yeah! First and the last time I'll ever do anything like that. That kind of enthusiasm, minus all the fuck yeahs,

was evident at screenings of the interview across the country, many of which sold out. The movie had become an event. Rogan and Goldberg even showed up at a midnight screening in Los Angeles. Standing next to revelers dressed as Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, the two filmmakers addressed the crowd. Thank you so fucking much for coming. We thought this might not happen at all.

The interview wound up making more than a million dollars on Christmas Day. Admittedly, that was a tiny fraction of its budget. But it wasn't bad for a movie that, just a week before, had been all but dead. And those sold-out screenings were a Christmas gift to the indie theaters that showed the film, including the Belcourt. I decided that I wanted to look at the money that we netted from the interview and put

it into a Robert Altman retrospective, which we wound up doing. Just to use that money for some good. I mean, you could come out during Nashville and scream, America, fuck yeah. I mean, that crowd would get it. I'll take it back. Maybe I will do it a second time. Ultimately, the interview wound up making

about $12 million worldwide at the box office. More importantly, there were no reports of violence associated with the film. By the time the movie left theaters in late January 2015, the nonstop noise surrounding the Sony hack had begun to quiet down. Don't get me wrong. Journalists were still publishing revelations

from those stolen emails and would keep doing so for months. And it would take a long time for the company Don't get me wrong, journalists were still publishing revelations from those stolen emails, and would keep doing so for months. And it would take a long time for the company to recover from the damage done to its computer systems. But after the release of the interview, there were no more anonymous threats, and no more wide-scale data dumps. And among the public, interest in the Sony hack began to wane.

The thinking was, the movie had made it to theaters, and nobody had been hurt. Maybe we can all just move on. On February 5th, 2015, Sony announced Amy Pascal was leaving her job as the head of the studio's film division. It was a devastating blow. She'd been with the company since 1996

and had been running the movie side for more than a decade. As Pascal would later say, that job was her identity. She loved running the studio. Here she is back in 2012, at the peak of her Sony career, talking to those middle school kids. What do you want your legacy to be? That we made great movies. That we made movies that mattered.

That it was a great period at Columbia, or Sony, when I was here helping run it. And Pascal really did make great movies at Sony. The Social Network, Moneyball, Ali, Sense and Sensibility, Captain Phillips, Adaptation, and that's just the top of my head list. Still, by early 2015, her exit from Sony felt like a given. In recent years, the studio's film division had been struggling. And while Linton claimed Pascal's departure had nothing to do with her emails about Obama, it's honestly hard to see how that wasn't a major factor. Less than a week after the news broke, Pascal was on stage with Tina Brown at the Women in the World conference in San Francisco. Though the official word was that Pascal had resigned from Sony, her comments from the stage told a different story. All the women here are doing

incredible things in this world, she said. All I did was get fired. Pascal told Brown about one of her big takeaways from the hack. I did learn that you should always say exactly what you think directly to people all of the time and not maybe try to manage it. And she discussed her fears about leaving Sony to become a film producer. I'm scared. You know, I'm 56. It's not exactly the time you want to, like, start all over again. But it's kind of great, and I have to.

And it's going to be a new adventure for me. And you know what? She was right. In the years that followed, Pascal earned multiple Oscar nominations and produced a whole bunch of hits. Everything from Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse to Little Women to Challengers. They're just the latest entries in a long and mostly distinguished filmography.

So while Pascal will always be associated with the hack, her career won't be defined by it. As for Linton, he stuck with Sony after the hack, but not for long. He left the CEO job in 2017, after 12 years, and joined the board of Snap Inc. Today, he's the chairman of the board of Warner Music Group. In May 2016, not long before his departure from Sony, Linton talked about the hack during an interview at Oxford University.

He noted that, even then, people were still casually telling him that they'd been going through his emails, which he found strange. And he mentioned that, nowadays, he was using his fax machine a lot more. Linton also said that, in retrospect, Sony had been a ripe target for a new kind of cyber attack, one in which embarrassing information is stolen and disseminated worldwide. We created a little bit of our own mess. You know, the film industry,

more so than the television business even, has prospered and has built up this publicity machine. And a lot of the reason why these emails got the attention that they did was because they involve celebrities, and we live in a culture of celebrity. Linsen hoped that other leaders had paid attention to how the hackers had operated, so they could prevent it from happening to them. We do know now what the real dangers are about cybersecurity. We do know now what the real issues surrounding privacy are and how we are all subject to having our lives exposed.

And if anything, we were the canary in the coal mine, and it was a relatively inexpensive cost to the economy or society at whole, a great cost to me and my colleagues. But I would hope that at that cost, we've all learned a really, really good lesson. There definitely were lessons learned from the Sony attack, and not just by business leaders. The effects of the hack were devastating. The disruption of countless lives, the loss of a longtime company leader, and financial damages estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars. By raiding Sony and releasing its data into the wild, where the press and public could dig through it,

the hackers had turned info into ammo. It was an inventive and effective way to take someone down. I think the Russians were watching. That's John Carlin, the former U.S. Assistant Attorney General who worked with Sony after the attack was discovered. If you look at what they then did in the election in 2016, they similarly went after the least protected part of the DNC system, took email, dumped it in order to do this information warfare. John's referring to messages stolen from Democratic National Committee staff members, emails that were leaked in the run-up to the 2016 DNC convention. That incident, along with pretty much everything else that's happened since 2016,

would quickly overshadow the Sony hack. The crazy-looking skeleton screen, those ridiculous celebrity emails, the threats to theaters, they'd soon be pushed aside by a series of all-new international incidents. As a result, the story of the Sony hack still feels unfinished, as if it just kind of faded away quietly. There were some ramifications in the years ahead. In response to the hack, Barack Obama imposed sanctions on North Korea in 2015, cutting the country off from several U.S. financial institutions. And in 2018, the criminal complaint

against a North Korean named Park Shin-hyuk was unsealed. Hyuk was a supposed member of a hacking collective called the Lazarus Group. The complaint alleges that Hyuk, along with a handful of unnamed co-conspirators, is responsible for numerous cyberattacks worldwide. That includes the Sony hack, as well as an attempt on a British production company that was developing a TV drama involving North Korea, a show that was eventually shelved. It also included a failed attack on employees of AMC Theaters, which took place when the chain was still planning on showing the interview. The charges were announced in Los Angeles by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Wilkinson. These were not just attacks against computers. These were attacks against freedom of speech.

But Park Jin-hyuk and his cohorts have yet to land in a U.S. court. And given the nature of relations between America and North Korea, that seems highly unlikely. For those who worked at Sony in 2014, the story of the hack still doesn't have a satisfying ending. I asked John Carlin about that. Is it feasible for these employees to expect that someday there'll be an arrest for this, or that someday there'll be a full counting of what actually happened? Or does that just seem impossible at this point? I never say impossible. The reach of the Justice Department is long, as is the memory. And so it took a while, but there are now criminal indictments of the individuals responsible.

So if they travel or if there's a regime change, they can be arrested, held accountable in court. In the meantime, the hack still resonates in the entertainment industry. Michael Fisk spent more than 12 years at Sony, helping to market its films overseas. For him, the outrage over the interview was a reminder that the impact of a Hollywood movie goes way beyond our borders. Yeah, I think overall, like, Hollywood can be very navel-gazing. We think we're the middle of the world, right?

Like, whatever we do is, you know, it's like, we can say and do whatever we want. And I think the hack kind of shows how interconnected, you know, our world is and what we do

does impact it, you know, or how people are going to react, you know, to things. Certainly, Hollywood is more aware than ever of how

its films and TV shows might be received and more cautious. One of the many forgotten subplots of the hack was the story of a big studio film called Pyongyang. It was a thriller about an American who winds up in danger in North Korea's capital. By late 2014, before the hack was discovered, the movie was just a few months away from shooting. It had a big star, Steve Carell, and a big director, Gore Verbinski, who made the first few Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

But after the threats over the interview, Fox decided not to distribute Carell's film, essentially killing it. Sad day for creative expression, the actor tweeted. As you probably know, the Pyongyang movie never materialized at another studio. In fact, in the 10 years since the Sony hack, I can count the number of truly provocative big studio movies on one hand. I don't mean provocative in the everyone-got-mad-on-Twitter-for-a-day kind of way. I mean movies with major budgets and big stars that deal with ideas or events that are going to make people uncomfortable, maybe even upset. Think about it.

Can you name more than a few recent big studio films that felt even slightly dangerous? Borat 2, I guess? I can't put all the blame on the Sony hack for the slow, sad watering down of big studio movies over the last 10 years. But I do think the response to the interview gave everyone, from filmmakers to studio executives to theater owners, a way too vivid illustration of what could happen when your art makes people angry.

Well, I've heard Seth say, is like, we, speaking of him and Evan and their companies, like, we, now we know the line. We know what's too edgy now. Right. That movie was too edgy. That's Dan Sterling again.

Which I think is another way of saying, yeah, we probably shouldn't have quite gone that far. After the interview, that line between edgy and too edgy became a giant electrified wall, one that nobody at the big studios dares to scale. And I miss mainstream films that are risky or shocking and make everyone in the theater feel a little squirmy

or even mad. Movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Zero Dark Thirty, or To Die For, or Superbad, or freakin' Starship Troopers. All Sony movies, by the way. This past winter, I found myself wandering around the Sony lot for the first time in years. It was a weekday morning, and the lot was bustling with activity. In one soundstage,

people were setting up a giant green screen backdrop. At the commissary, diners were holding meetings and typing frantically on their laptops at the same time. At one point, a 30-something guy on his cell phone rushed by me, barking out creative notes to some poor writer on the other end of the line. You need to, like, lower the stakes. There was also a proudly displayed poster for a movie that Sony was sure would be its next big hit, Madam Web. He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.

Anyway, the Sony lot hasn't changed too much since 2014. But Sony Pictures has. In the last decade, the studio was finally able to launch and revive several hit franchises, including Jumanji, Bad Boys, and Ghostbusters. And a few years ago, it signed a big deal with Netflix, giving the streamer the exclusive rights to Sony's theatrical films. That arrangement demonstrates just how different Hollywood is now, a decade after the hack. The big tech companies, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, have deeper pockets and a wider reach than any of the big studios. They own the industry now.

And if one of the lessons of the Sony hack was to keep your information guarded, these tech companies encourage the exact opposite. They ask us to hand over our email addresses and our credit card numbers, and in some cases, any detail we can provide about our viewing habits, just to watch a movie. And if one of the other lessons of the Sony hack was to watch what you say online, well, that was a lesson many in Hollywood soon forgot. Even today, people in the entertainment industry are putting all kinds of incriminating stuff in their emails, not to mention their texts, slacks, and DMs. For example, in 2019,

Warner Brothers chairman CEO Kevin Tsujihara resigned after some incriminating text messages wound up in the press. And in 2023, a series of texts and emails showed that an HBO staffer had used fake Twitter accounts to attack high-profile TV critics. Watching people be so careless with their communications over and over again reminds me of a line from the interview. attack high-profile TV critics. Watching people be so careless with their communications, over and over again, reminds me of a line from the interview. How many times can the U.S. make the same mistake?

As many times as it takes. But there were other ramifications from the Sony hack. Take all those reports about how the studio's female executives, and some of its female stars, received less compensation than their male counterparts. All that attention kicked off a much bigger conversation about who gets paid what in Hollywood. So there is a huge wage gap in the industry. This is Jessica Chastain being interviewed by the Huffington Post in October 2015, less than a year after the Sony hack was discovered. It's all in front of the camera and behind the camera, across the board. That month, a report indicated that Chastain had made $7 million for the film The Martian While her co-star, Matt Damon, got $25 million

While the exact details of Chastain's payday are hard to verify She told HuffPo the difference was even bigger than that I made less than a quarter of that in reality Wow Chastain wasn't the only actress to talk about smaller paydays in the wake of the hack. Michelle Williams, Amanda Seyfried, Rose Byrne, Gillian Anderson,

they all spoke up about Hollywood's lack of fair pay. And when Charlize Theron read those emails about how Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams had been underpaid, she got pissed. Her words, not mine. So she made Sony give her the same salary

that Chris Hemsworth got for their 2016 film The Huntsman, Winter's War. But these conversations weren't limited to Hollywood. After 2014, there were countless reports about pay disparity in numerous fields, everything from nursing to education to engineering. Of course, those kinds of conversations had always been going on. But the hack gave them a newfound urgency and a newfound visibility. All of which raises kind of a weird question. Was the Sony hack, in the long run, actually a good thing?

After all, it exposed a lot of worrisome behavior at one of the most powerful entertainment companies in the world. And it made people take a hard look at Hollywood, with all its flaws and biases and sometimes downright shitty behavior, and start to demand change. But a lot of that change still hasn't happened. And besides, the human cost of the hack, the disrupted lives, the stolen data,

the sheer terror of being targeted, was devastating. For many of those who went through it, the argument that the hack had some kind of upside seems absurd. I mean, I was talking to a journalist the other day, was like, well, a lot of good stuff came out of it. You know, the Hollywood pay gap came out of that. That's Seth Rogen expressing his frustrations

to Bill Simmons in a 2016 interview. And I was like, yeah, but look at what happened as a result of all that. One person lost their job. A woman who was running the studio, who specifically had a very feminist agenda in the best way possible. I asked Marisa McGrath Liston about the legacy of the hack.

She was the very first Sony employee to agree to speak with me about what happened 10 years ago. Like all the former Sony workers you heard on this show, and the many who spoke to me anonymously, Marisa initially wasn't sure she wanted to revisit what had happened in 2014. But she thought it was important that people understood what those thousands of Sony employees had gone through.

A lot of people don't remember the hack. Right. And it was a big deal. Yeah, or they remember it totally wrong. Or they remember it totally wrong. And they remember it as this funny punchline or something like that. And it was real and it totally wrong. And they remember it as this funny punchline or something like that. And it was real and it was devastating.

I asked Marisa if anything good had come out of the attack on Sony Pictures. She was understandably conflicted about that. She acknowledged that the hack had exposed some long-running problems within Hollywood. Because the pay disparity did get brought up, right? And I do think that we hopefully have closed that gap because that got brought up. But on the other hand... But on the other hand, I would say no, because look at all of the damage that it did. And, you know, what happened to people that we really care about.

Still, for Marisa, there was at least one indisputably valuable takeaway from this whole ordeal. I do think twice on everything before I put things in writing. And I know sometimes I'll get emails or texts and I'll be like, really? You're putting that in writing after the Sony hack? The Hollywood Hack was reported and written by me, Brian Raftery. The executive producers of this podcast are Juliet Lipman 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. Special thanks to Jody Walker, Chelsea Stark-Jones, Jomi Adeneron, Chris Ryan, Charles Holmes, Kaya McMullen, Craig Horlbeck, Steve Allman, Mike Wargon, Brian Phillips, and Steven Baraldi. I also want to thank all the people who spoke with me for this show,

especially the former Sony employees. And I also want to thank Jenny, Tegan, and Bridget. Most of all, thanks to you for listening.