The firestorm signals that the industry may be entering a new era in which the villains that filmmakers choose to focus on - particularly foreign nationalities or sitting world leaders - will be scrutinised more closely than ever.

North Korea - which has appeared as the villain in several Hollywood productions in recent years, including 2002), (2004), (2005), and (2013) - first threatened retaliation over in June 2014, calling it tantamount to "an act of war". The hackers who took responsibility for the data breach made public on November 24, have not been directly linked to North Korea, but their demand to Sony was to not release the film.

"We have a long history of attacking other cultures through movies, but we are all now interconnected in ways that we weren't before," says University of Nebraska-Lincoln film studies professor Wheeler Winston Dixon. "Now something like a cyberattack is possible."

In light of the recent developments, film producers and studio executives say they do not expect any major studios to move forward with any more projects that centre on North Korea.

"I've got to believe that this will spook anybody from considering making the North Koreans bad guys in a film," producer Bill Gerber ( ; ) says. "Unless you were dealing with something that was fact-based and very compelling, it might not be worth it."

Ironically, North Korea had, for the past decade or so, been considered a safer target for filmmakers than other alternatives, particularly China.

In 2011, MGM altered its remake of - digitally removing Chinese villains over concerns about how the film would be perceived in China, the fastest-growing movie market in the world. Chinese flags and symbols were erased and new dialogue was recorded for the picture, which came out in 2012. In the finished project, the antagonists are from North Korea.

With the North Korean option no longer a safe one, "You are likely to increasingly see the studios make films where the bad guys are not from any known country," says University of Southern California professor Stanley Rosen.

That approach was initially considered by Sony Pictures and the filmmakers behind , co-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. But after much internal debate, it was decided that the cult of personality around the North Korean leader made him an irresistible satirical target.

"It's not that controversial to label [him] as bad," Rogen said in an interview in mid-November, days before the hacking attack occurred. "Creatively that was appealing, like, 'Oh, you can just villainise the guy and it's okay because he is a villain.' And it's so bizarre, all the myths. We didn't make up anything in the movie. It's all based on actual stuff."

There is a high-profile example of a film made this century tweaking a foreign country - and getting away with it. The 2006 comedy , which starred British actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as a buffoonish TV reporter from Kazakhstan, led to protests in that Central Asian country. But the matter never boiled over, and the uproar in Kazakhstan dovetailed perfectly into that film's marketing campaign.

Within hours of North Korea's official protests over , Rogen and Goldberg received a congratulatory call from Baron Cohen. "We were like, 'What do we do now?'" Rogen recalls.

Now, of course, with the benefit of hindsight, many question the wisdom of making Kim the villain. "You have a regime that is super secretive and totally repressive, so making a film like that is a dicey call at best, I'd say," Dixon says.

Of course, is hardly the first film to land a major studio in hot water with a foreign country.

China condemned the 1997 Brad Pitt-starring drama , which depicted a European mountain climber's relationship with the Dalai Lama. In the film, distributed by Sony's TriStar Pictures label, Chinese military officers were shown beating up Tibetans. Pitt and others connected to the film were banned from entering China.

Around the same time, the Walt Disney Co became involved in a dust-up with China over its release of Martin Scorsese's , which also is about the Dalai Lama and the Chinese in Tibet. "In those days, the [Chinese] market wasn't that big, so it wasn't that devastating, but the Chinese definitely retaliated," says Rosen.

Hollywood often mines the headlines for its next diabolical villain. Over the decades, Germany, Russia, Vietnam and other countries have been the source of villainous characters. Middle Eastern countries have also long been a dependable font of bad guys for filmmakers.

That means the next villainous state could make itself apparent some day soon. In the interim, what's the alternative? "Actually, Russia is the current bad guy, according to most things I read," says Gerber. "Certainly Middle Eastern rogue states. If you watch TV series , they seem to be pretty dependable bad guys."

Conversely, Dixon believes American cinema could enter a period of "escapist entertainment". According to the film historian: "That means more fictional bad guys and entirely fictional worlds. We are going to create villains to hate. What is Darth Vader? What is about? Create a whole universe where somebody is absolutely evil. You create imaginary villains and destroy them."

The industry may also see some self-censorship, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for entertainment data firm Rentrak. "Of course we don't want to see that, but it could happen," he says. At the very least, studios are going to think differently about their movie villains. "There has to be a new perspective - and I'm not talking about self-editing to the point of not being creative," says Dergarabedian. "But any studio is wise to look at their content."

Still, even as Hollywood vows to leave North Korea alone (at least for now) some observers have applauded Sony for making - and eventually releasing - .

"It is left to American corporations, including Sony Pictures, to stand up for the rights of free speech," says Laura Martin, a senior media analyst at Needham & Co investment bank. "Freedom of speech is one of the core differentiators of American society."