There are two salient points in this discussion:
- Making the movie The Interview is a creative process. It is a comedy and not a documentary or a movie with a political advocacy element.
- Terrorist threats against America, American interests and especially airplane travel has not stopped any one airline or the airline industry from stopping their trade.
Now for the qualifiers.
In point #1 I do not think in today's climate that a movie studio would make a movie that shows a likeness of the the Prophet Muhammad's or burning the Quran or anything blasphemous. There have been movies about Jesus Christ in a demeaning light.
Point #2, if movie theater chains pulled the movie from their schedule because of a specific terrorist threat then will they do like in the case when an actual incident happened a couple of years ago at a shooting in a cinema when a particular movie was shown? What happened was that they showed the movie eventually. Granted that in that case there was no threat, just an act.
Another point to consider is that if the US makes a statement that a nation and not non-state actors made this threat then North Korea is likely to face retribution from the US military for any actual event. That is an actual deterrent and that's what President Obama was talking about the Sony mistake. The US nuclear stockpile was a deterrent to the Soviet Union during the Cold Ware era. If this is an act of cyberwarfare then the USs will respond, you bet.
George Clooney called on the industry to stand up to such threats and Sony and some movie chains did the reverse. The industry will make it tough on Sony and those chains in the future.
Like the President I think Sony made a mistake. Even if some chains pulled it Sony should have distributed to those chains that were willing and even used market force discounts to get it out there and show those who stopped the movie from being shown that a terrorist should not tell us what movies we can make and what we can see. Soon they will tell us which water plant to shut down and which power substations ot shut down. Try living in a community when ConEd says because of threats to the families of their employees they will cut off power to Richmond Hill. MAybe Nehru will have to lash down his white rum in candle light.
