In spite of the controversy that has threatened "The Interview," Sony Pictures reports that the film has raked in $15 million in sales since being made available online last week. It has also gathered an approximate $2.8 million for its theatrical release on top the sales made via the Internet.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the huge sales were generated as the company released the R-rated comedy across four different platforms before Christmas Day. The movie, which is available in Google Play, YouTube, Xbox Live and it's own website, has already reached 2 million rentals and purchases. To date, it is now the company's highest selling online film.
While the controversy probably added hype to the movie, Google played a big part in ensuring the success of the movie's online release, said TechCrunch. The company's numerous platforms, which included Google Play and YouTube, were mobilized to make the movie available immediately to the public and gather huge sales.
For a while, it seemed that the film was not going to see the light of day after Sony Pictures canceled it's worldwide theatrical release scheduled for Christmas Day following a series of cyber attacks. The group of hackers, who call themselves Guardians of Peace, got access to 100 terabytes of sensitive data from the company, reported CNN.
Initial investigation by the FBI has connected the group with North Korea. At the time of Sony's cancelation of the film, U.S. President Barack Obama expressed disappointment over what he deemed was suppression of free speech.
"We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States because if somebody is able to intimidate us out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like," he noted in his press statement.
However, two days after the release of the movie, North Korea's National Defense Commission responded through its state-run media calling out Obama on the movie's dissemination. "U.S. President Obama is the chief culprit who forced Sony Pictures Entertainment to 'indiscriminately distribute' the movie and took the lead in appeasing and blackmailing cinema houses and theatres in the U.S. mainland to distribute the movie," it stated.
The department went so far as adding that, "Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest."
The communist state suffered from Internet disruption this week and has blamed the United States for the incident, said The Hollywood Gossip. North Korea has also accused the U.S. government of wrongfully blaming their country for the hacking of Sony's data, "without clear evidence."
