Yeah, I heard some guys on the radio discussing this - not sure if it was a theory or an actual hard thing they had cites for, but they were saying that apparently the insurance only covers ‘total loss’, and releasing it on VOD or something would turn it into a ‘partial loss’ which isn’t covered.
I thought that movie insurance was generally in the form of “completion insurance”, so that if some catastrophe befell the project they were insured for money already spent? I could be totally wrong on this. But it would be surprising if an insurance company would pay out simply because Sony voluntarily elected not to release.
They could probably make a decent profit with a direct-to-video release plus VOD and pay-TV movie channels. I doubt that this piece of dreck cost much to make!
That’s all very well, but surely it’s a one-time resort. Would insurers even cover studios anymore (at any price), now that we know that anonymous persons have the power to dictate studio output? (Not so much because of the hacking, but because of the threats of “9-11-style violence.”)
There won’t even be such a thing as insurance in the entertainment industry from this time forward.
Yeah, there have been movies that have parodied dictators before. According to Wikipedia, Naked Gun “begins in Beirut where a gang of anti-American leaders including Ayatollah Khomeini, Mikhail Gorbachev, Yasser Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, and Idi Amin, as well as a man named Pahpshmir, meet to plan the ultimate terrorist act against the United States.” In Hot Shots Part Deux, Saddam Hussein was crushed by a piano. In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Saddam Hussein was Satan’s gay lover. In Team America: World Police, “Kim Jong-il kills Alec Baldwin with an assault rifle, and then is kicked over a balcony by Lisa. He is impaled on a Pickelhaube and is revealed to be an alien cockroach from the planet Gyron.” When all of those films were released, the real life dictators were still in power.
There are also dramatic movies that are released that are about current repressive governments. Rosewater is a recent one, and I’m sure more film knowledgeable people can think of others. I don’t know what makes The Interview more stupid to release than the other movies that feature current foreign leaders.
I’m not at all an expert on insurance stuff, and it’s probably something for the insurance company and lawyers to argue about. They can argue that they aren’t voluntarily electing to release because they think it won’t do well, but because of a legitimate threat, and because of the safety of the audience.
Also, because of the leak, we know a lot of detail about the budget, which was $44 million overall. I’m not sure how much VOD usually makes, or how much the studio would get from HBO or whatever movie channels, so I wouldn’t be able to guess if they’d make their money back that way.
Eh. It’s just the realpolitik of the playground: if you taunt the fat weird kid because you think you can get away with it, you don’t get to complain “but it was only a joke!” when he shits in your gym bag.
Damn. The bad guys are winning.
From the article linked in the OP:
This would be a lot more convincing if it weren’t coming from the people who were brazenly suppressing the distribution of the movie. Because let’s get this straight: North Korea didn’t stop this movie. Sony did.
And no, I don’t expect movie companies to be Big Damn Heroes. But I do expect them to make and release movies. That’s kind of their reason for existing. Whether this movie was going to be any good or not is irrelevant: Sony has just conclusively demonstrated that they have no reason to exist.
I must admit I’m surprised at the cost, and at the fact that Rogen and Franco together pulled in a total of $15 million just for their own salaries. All I can say right now is that this is NOT something I’d want to have a financial stake in! 
On the other hand what percent of revenues come from theaters anymore? I thought the bigger reason now to do theaters was for the publicity/reviews… And this movie already has a lot of publicity.
I was under the impression that the distributor takes most of the box office from the theatre and the theatres themselves make next to nothing and rely on concession sales and pre-movie advertising to make their money.
There’s also the question of whether they can claim a total loss if they decline to make a best-effort to mitigate the loss with a VOD/DVD-only release. It would be like filing an total-loss insurance claim for a flooded warehouse even though a large percentage of the stored goods consisted of something (e.g. aluminum ingots) not at all susceptible to water damage.
Damn, I don’t have much to add, but reading through that budget breakdown is crazy. Gives you a nice peek into the huge bundles of cash that Hollywood throws at movies.
Oh, nonsense. First, Sony is in the business of making money (or if you’re talking Sony Pictures Classics, buying cool films and burying them in January/February).
And second, for goodness sake, Sony didn’t even MAKE “The Interview”, Columbia Pictures did - Sony was just distributing for Columbia. And all the theaters were saying no. Which didn’t leave much income, did it? In fact, tell ya what - there are plenty of other distributors who have the chance to be brave, unless behind the scenes Columbia (from whom I’ve read no comments) isn’t willing to shop it.
Here’s something else funny:
“The Interview” New York Premiere Canceled as Rival Studios Push Sony to Pull Release.
Given the sort of chicanery that goes on with Hollywood accounting under normal circumstances, it ought to be highly entertaining to watch if this goes to an insurance claim. Bonus points if more leaked documents come out indicating a total cost far less than Sony’s loss claim. :smack:
I agree with Wile E. Every movie, every book, every piece of art that might offend someone anywhere in the world needs to be destroyed because you know, it only takes one crazypants.
Sony has raised the white flag and kissed Kim Jong-un’s fat ass. They don’t even have the guts to release the movie on digital. Freedom of expression took a major hit and the thugs won.
I bet Sony buries this film forever. It will never be seen.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/17/media/sony-the-interview-video-on-demand/