Stranger than fiction: how Kim Jong-un had last laugh over Seth Rogen movie

A few weeks ago, when a freshly stoned Seth Rogen sat down for a lunch interview about The Interview, the likelihood of trouble seemed remote. "You're always hoping nothing horrible is going to happen, obviously," he said. "If something horrible happened and they were like, 'It's inappropriate to release this movie now,' we'd ultimately go, 'Yeah, we got to make it and got paid in advance'." Unfortunately, Rogen's chuckling hypothetical has come to pass. After a devastating hacking attack on Sony Pictures and threats of terrorist attacks when The Interview was set to open in theatres on Christmas Day, Sony cancelled the release of Rogen's film. The real-world geopolitics that initially served as fodder for parody in The Interview have upended one of Hollywood's biggest holiday releases. The Interview, which depicts a hapless assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, enraged a country extremely sensitive to portrayals of its dictator. A US official said federal investigators had now connected North Korea to the hacks that roiled Sony Pictures and aired its dirty laundry in huge leaks of private emails. The attack was possibly the costliest for a US company ever, said Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at research firm Gartner. "This attack went to the heart and core of Sony's business - and succeeded," she said. "We haven't seen any attack like this in the annals of US breach history." The still unravelling effects have put an uneasy spotlight on a goofy comedy, with some questioning Sony's decision to make a film that was sure to provoke an isolated nation. The filmmakers describe striving to push the limits of what a major studio would support. "When it comes to the movies we've made at Sony, they've just got [guts]," Evan Goldberg, who co-directed the film with Rogen, said before the hacking leaks. "And before anyone knew it, we were filming the movie and it's too late." Rogen and Goldberg initially conceived of the film as about North Korea's former leader, Kim Jong-il, who died in late 2011. Goldberg says they did "a big old search" of the world's dictators, settling on North Korea because its bizarreness, he said, was rife for comedy. There are precedents. In The Great Dictator (1940), Charlie Chaplin played a version of Adolf Hitler, dubbed Adenoid Hynkel. Rogen and Goldberg could have similarly fictionalised their central character. But the two wanted to keep the film grounded in reality. In their last movie, the apocalypse comedy hit This Is the End, its stars played variations of themselves. "When you're on that set with James Franco playing James Franco and Mike Cera playing Mike Cera, you're like: 'Well why would we have, like, King Jong Jon, a fake dictator of East Korea, when we could just do something real'?" said Goldberg. "We were always like, 'It's more exciting than making a regular movie'," said Rogen, a renowned weed advocate who happily acknowledged smoking before the interview. "It adds a link to the real world, which is exciting." After seeing a Mike Wallace interview on 60 Minutes, Rogen and Goldberg came up with the idea of centring the movie around an entertainment television show host (James Franco) landing an interview with Kim and being tasked by the CIA to kill him. Though the movie ultimately ends in a fiery death for the Korean leader, the film equally satirises American culture. "I'm sure back [when they were writing it] some of the stuff seemed absurd, like this could never happen - a pop culture figure from America going to hang out with the head of North Korea," said Franco. "But since we've made it, Dennis Rodman went over there. Reality is matching the craziness of the script." With only one box-office slip in Rogen and Goldberg's history (2011's The Green Hornet) and coming off the success of This Is the End (US$101 million domestically), The Interview was financially a good bet for Sony. Costing a relatively modest US$40 million, the film was expected to make around US$30 million in its opening weekend. Just how much the cyberattack will ultimately cost Sony is unclear. Sony faces trouble on several fronts after nearly four weeks since the cyberattack. In addition to vanishing box-office revenue from The Interview, the leaked documents could muck up production schedules, experts say. There will be the cost of defending the studio against lawsuits by ex-employees angry over leaked social security numbers and other personal information. And then there are actors and talent who just might decide to work at another studio. Beyond the financial blow, some say the attack and Sony's capitulation has raised troubling questions about self-censorship and whether other studios and US companies are now open season for cyberterrorists. "Artistic freedom is at risk," said Efraim Levy, a senior financial analyst at research firm S&P Capital IQ. "Are we not going to put out movies that offend some constituencies?" Inflaming an unpredictable regime was always going to be a risk. Leaked emails revealed Kazuo Hirai, chief executive of Sony in Japan, asked for the film's climactic fatal explosion - including an image of Kim's face melting - to be toned down. Other emails reveal Sony Pictures chief Michael Lynton distancing Sony's name from the film in promotional materials. An email from Rogen to Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal showed him arguing against too much sensitivity. "This is now a story of Americans changing their movie to make North Koreans happy," he wrote. Soon after the release of the trailer for The Interview in June, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called the film "an act of war" and declared its maker a "gangster filmmaker". Rogen compared the response to the closest a comedian can come to winning an Oscar. "We did a lot of high-fiving," said Rogen, who noted they were quickly pulled into a meeting with concerned executives. "When an entire country - a nuclear power - condemns you and your movie, it's really exciting." As alterations were made to The Interview (emails show back-and-forth through early October on the explosion scene), its October 10 release date was pushed to December. Test screening suggested the film was playing well. "Going into the testing process, there was an anxiety: What if it is just offensive? What if we've done something that's just deemed inappropriate?" said Goldberg. "And every preview went awesome." Rogen said they were "90 per cent, 99 per cent sure" that North Korea would only respond with bluster. But some of his comments now seem ominous. "I don't even know if they've seen it yet," he said. "We heard they might have been able to hack into one of our servers and actually watch the movie."

Stranger than fiction: how Kim Jong-un had last laugh over Seth Rogen movie

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Seth Rogen joked a few weeks ago about the possibility of The Interview being cancelled over the row with North Korea - only to see it happen

Seth Rogen joked a few weeks ago about the possibility of The Interview being cancelled over the row with North Korea - only to see it happen