New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Sony held their ground on whatever behind the scenes demands were made by the hackers. Days later, a more aggressive stance was taken by the #GOP. They published a series of email exchanges between vaunted producer Scott Rudin and longtime Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Amy Pascal. The discourse was…regrettable.

Presuming that they were speaking behind a veil of internet anonymity, the individuals discussed several Hollywood celebrities. Angelina Jolie was chastised for being bratty and “minimally talented,” Aaron Sorkin was derided for being too financially motivated and possibly broke, and Obama was, well, let’s say that movie suggestions were proffered on his behalf. They were straight out of the Blackula and Superfly days of the 1970s. Sony has apologized many times for the racial profiling demonstrated by Pascal and Rudin’s private correspondence, which is a strange situation all the way around.

Pascal in particular is a vaunted supporter of the Democratic party who has held multiple fundraisers for Obama. She was placed in the odd position of backtracking from comments she made in private, a key aspect of the entire situation. Every high profile executive in the world got a cold chill in their spine when they realized exactly how little control they had over their emails and texts in the digital era.

With Sony’s most powerful movie executive in full apology mode, the #GOP went on offense. They leaked documents that revealed how frustrated Sony strategists were by the quality of Adam Sandler movies. The longtime anchor for Sony films was discredited for his greed and the reductive nature of his most recent releases.

In another instance of Sony execs biting a hand that fed them, burgeoning superstar Kevin Hart was assailed for his unwillingness to make social media posts for his films without further financial compensation. The grudging Sony employees determined that such situations should be negotiated as clauses in future contracts. As one of Sony’s most reliable box office draws in recent years, Hart’s presence in such hostile messages went several steps beyond ungrateful.

As Sony continued to press forward with the release of The Interview, hackers grew more desperate. They released the working script for the next James Bond project, which is still a year away. They revealed the details of several upcoming projects under consideration. The most amusing of those was a potential union of the 21/22 Jump Street franchise with the flagging Men in Black franchise.

Also interesting was the revelation that Disney was trying to buy Spider-Man for their side of Marvel releases, which also meant that the current actor portraying the character, Andrew Garfield, was about to be unemployed. Put yourself in his shoes and imagine what hearing that news must have felt like.

The lingering impact of the Sony hack is being felt across the business and political worlds. Sony is already facing multiple lawsuits from current and former employees who are all rightfully outraged over the grotesque invasion of privacy. The arguments are valid, yet Sony’s culpability is something that is yet to be determined since the actions of the hackers were a criminal behavior they could not have anticipated. While some people wag their fingers that the company should have known, all businesses, big and small, are now quietly investigating the security of their digital information.

For everyone but Sony, this exercise has become a teaching moment. For Sony, it’s an unmitigated and historic disaster that has placed executives from their company in the awkward position of calling the American president misinformed. And they are doing this on the heels of finding the perfect Tyler Perry movie for him.

The ultimate outcome of the Sony hack is an issue that our staff determined should stand alone as its own Film Industry Story. So, that discussion will come tomorrow.

Continued:       1       2