‘The Interview’ Flops, FBI ‘North Korean Hack’ Story Also Debunked

Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire 

Official FBI claims that North Korea was behind the ‘Sony hack’ were debunked today by two leading cyber security firms. More on that later, but first, let’s look at the failure of film itself…

Despite being hyped and spun with unprecedented patriotic fervor, and getting a ton of free publicity from President Obama, Sony Entertainment’s The Interview is officially a flop.

The film was released in 331 independently owned cinemas on Christmas Day, pulling a paltry $1 million in gate receipts, as well as an equally poor showing on the download charts too. The film was a big hit on the illegal download front though. According to the blog TorrentFreak, the film was downloaded around 750,000 times as of yesterday.

Between Sony, the White House and a highly autistic US media, no other movie in history has been given so much political hype. Unfortunately on this occasion, the steak hasn’t lived up to the sizzle.

The main reason it bombed is the same as why most films bomb – because it’s a really bad film. Reviews have been less than favorable. On the internet’s largest movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, critic’s scores dropped from 53% before its release, to 47% (and dropping) after its Christmas Day release – the lowest rating of all major releases. Other sites generally rate it at 2 and a half stars. 

Critics at the Washington Post have said the film “isn’t as edgy as its reputation suggests”. Tomatoes described it as containing “middling (average) laughs”, and paints ‘stars’ Seth Rogen and James Franco as merely, “likable” (rather generous). Reviewers at Screen Rant were a bit tougher on Sony’s marginal effort, describing the film as, “not all that buzz-worthy”, and describing it as “a juvenile  political fantasy”, and “plays more like a sketch show or sitcom  rather than a theatrical film”. In fact, this brainchild was hatched by the great Hollywood minds behind celluloid masterpieces like Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin and This Is The End - all productions thatwere pitched at the 13-15 year old demographic. In other words, if you want to pay $12 (plus another $10 for nibbles) to see a bad ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch on a big screen, then The Interview is your film.

Why did Sony go through so much trouble (and money) to push a mediocre cinema production? In 21st Century America, the majority of Americans still get their political analysis and history in entertainment form – getting their history from Hollywood’s prestige biopics – many of which are fictional, or from TV ‘news comedy’ programs presented by John Stewart or Stephen Colbert. This demographic of news consumers will tell you that they don’t really care about news, and that  The Interview is just ‘entertainment’ so it really doesn’t matter whether its fictional or not, because as far as they’re concerned, Kim Jung-Un is a nutty dictator and anything that undermines him is a good thing. This common rationale sounds eerily like many of our US State Department foreign policy briefings. No wonder then, that Sony’s CEO Michael Lynton actually punted The Interview to both the Rand Corporation and the US State Department for approval during the final editing phase this past summer – with both blessing the film’s plot line of the assassination of the North Korean leader. In the end, this was really a western propaganda film about regime change, and one which Washington nation-builders are eager to leak on DVD into North Korea (as mentioned in the Washington Post).

In the end , The Interview, just wasn’t good enough to compete with a number of other productions released at the same time like Wild, Unbroken, Foxcatcher, Into The Woods, and The Imitation Game - all of which received better reviews and critical acclaim. 

The film cost $46 million to make, with the studio and distributors paying an additional $40-50 million to market the production. It may be able to recover its costs over the long run, as curiosity around the publicity stunt is gradually wringed-out over time.

The publicity-driven events also served as a beta run for the studio’s long-term idea of selling its films directly to the public online, cutting out all of the middlemen. Quietly amid last week’s controversy, Sony had launched its own portal for downloading, entitled SeeTheInterview.com, where fans can see the film for $5.99. Similar direct deals were struck with Google Play and YouTube. Figures are not yet available, but studio execs are surely monitoring the numbers closely and will be looking at how best to optimize integrated marketing campaigns in order to coalesce with giant publicity stunts like we saw with The Interview.

It’s Official: Sony Hack was a ‘False Flag’ 

As 21WIRE predicted last week, Washington’s official conspiracy theory that North Korea was the villain behind the infamous Sony Hack – has crumbled… 

Today we can confirm that two cyber security firms, Norse Corporation and Cloud Flare, conducted independent investigations into the hack and the results are a stark opposition to the FBI’s highly creative claim that Pyongyang carried out the historic hack. Experts confirmed that the alleged malware used in the cyber attack was in fact leaked years ago and any hacker could have utilized it since.

OBAMA: Took off for Hawaii after implicating North Korea for the hack.

If you remember, immediately after the hack hit the headlines, North Korea denied it, and smirking US media lambasted them for it. But now it’s abundantly clear that Pyongyang were telling the truth – while every single mainstream US broadcast journalist was parroting a huge lie. 

Last week we saw an US President, the US State Department, George Clooney, and every single broadcast media anchor and analyst riffing off of the FBI wild conspiracy about how some nefarious, secretive, SPECTRE-like cyber espionage layer nestled in the bowels of Pyongyang, had unleashed this merciless attack on poor Sony. The alleged North Korean hacking cabal was first referred to by FOX News as “Unit 121″, and later called “Bureau 121″ by CNN, and this week finally rebranded to the “Reconnaissance General Bureau”. Just like a Hollywood plot itself, it was all invented. Pure fantasy.

It was also reported that the firms’ investigations had uncovered one former Sony Entertainment employee and security officer referred to as “Lena”, who had high level admin access to the company’s IT system, and who has connections to the hacking group, ‘Guardians of Peace’ (#GOP). This means that the hack is more likely an ‘inside job’, and the motivations could have a redress for any number of grievances including Sony’s company lay-offs and online piracy prosecutions.

Yes, yes. Another round of lies from Hollywood and Washington propaganda spin-meisters.

One big bad publicity stunt for Sony, and one bad propaganda exercise by Washington DC.

READ MORE SONY HACK NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Sony Hack Files

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21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.