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Incredible press for a movie whose release they just canceled? The movie's getting a hell of a lot of attention; I'll grant you that. But I don't see how this h

Incredible press for a movie whose release they just canceled? The movie's getting a hell of a lot of attention; I'll grant you that. But I don't see how this helps the movie. I know a lot of people are speculating that Sony has something up its sleeve, like a limited-time-only release right after Xmas, or early next year, or a digital release, etc. I'd consider that an extraordinarily slim to nil outside possibility. The material leaked in the Sony hack does not exactly give the impression that these guys are marketing geniuses. Just sayin'. :) For what it's worth -- not saying you're suggesting this, just that I've now heard the theory a couple dozen times -- some people are speculating that Sony engineered this entire fiasco as a publicity stunt for the movie. That sort of thinking is beyond-the-pale naive. Sony doesn't want to be civilly or criminally liable for having doxxed thousands of its own employees. Believe me.

001sky 12y ago
The vituperative nature def. does not seem like a PR stunt gone awry. The flip side is the US may want to blame a state because they don't know who did it.
foobarian 12y ago
The movie was unlikely to make much money and was risking the other, more major releases. I bet they will release it later in the new year with excellent financial results.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  They may well attempt to rerelease it, and its notoriety may attract a decent opening weekend. But notoriety alone won't save a turkey. If it's actually bad, this incident won't be able to turn around its long-term prospects. If it's good, that's a different story -- but if it were good, you'd think Sony wouldn't have pulled support so quickly in the first place.
  - BillFranklin 12y ago
    It doesn't matter if it's a good film. That's why you see marketing campaigns saying 'just try it' - even if the product is crap they still make 1 sale. The film is getting such incredible hype a huge amount the profits will be in the opening night. Check out the Rotten Tomatoes score: critics are divided on whether it's a good film, but 96% of people want to see it. If Sony don't release the film eventually internationally, they'll lose money - but withholding it makes it a scarce commodity, drives hype etc. What you are now reading about The Interview isn't politics, it's PR crisis management. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/?search=the%20interview http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/?search=t...
    - jonnathanson 12y ago
      Sure. But hence my point about opening weekend (trial) vs. what happens after opening weekend (ongoing business, lifetime earnings). You can drive trial of a bad product, but it's extremely hard to get people to keep coming back, or to tell others it's worth seeing. So your bad product + ultra-hype is basically a recipe for a big opening with extreme decay every day thereafter. This usually isn't enough to recoup the production, print & advertising costs of a major movie, especially when you factor in profit-sharing and other cuts to top-line revenue (Rogen and Goldberg are almost assuredly getting points on the movie's gross, and it's possible that Franco is, too.) A general rule of thumb is that a movie studio spends at least as much on prints and advertising ("P&A") as it does on production costs for the movie itself. That is to say, if the movie cost $35M to make, Sony sunk another $35M or more into P&A. So it would need to earn more than $70M to break even (more than that, because everyone's taking points off the top-line gross, plus profit-sharing with theaters and distributors, etc.). Is it possible that Sony could earn that much on this sort of movie, given its notoriety? Maybe, maybe not. Notoriety alone can rarely get you to $70M. (It's possible, but unlikely.) To stand a better chance, your movie also needs to be halfway decent. Once again, I have no idea if this movie is good or bad. Just saying this for the sake of explanation.
      - BillFranklin 12y ago
        Surely if the movie is bad this (http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30589472 http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30589472) is still an incredibly good launch by world class pr people. If the movie is good then it's still a good launch and will make money afterwards. The thing about bad movies is you can only make money on the opening weekend - this marketing was free (+the original marketing costs already spent and ignoring the lasting costs of being hacked) so the ROI will be incredibly good. Any film that caused the president to give a speech about it pre-release is going to do well on the opening weekend - I still don't think it matters if it turns out its a bad film or not, but I can't wait for the data. I guess it will be here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_(2014_film) And total costs around <$100m (again discounting hack). This also isn't taking into account the ROI from turning Sony into the victim in this scenario - not a massive company with a tiny, unsophisticated infosec team who messed up big time by not investing more in security.

001sky 12y ago

The vituperative nature def. does not seem like a PR stunt gone awry. The flip side is the US may want to blame a state because they don't know who did it.

foobarian 12y ago

The movie was unlikely to make much money and was risking the other, more major releases. I bet they will release it later in the new year with excellent financial results.

jonnathanson 12y ago
They may well attempt to rerelease it, and its notoriety may attract a decent opening weekend. But notoriety alone won't save a turkey. If it's actually bad, this incident won't be able to turn around its long-term prospects. If it's good, that's a different story -- but if it were good, you'd think Sony wouldn't have pulled support so quickly in the first place.
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  It doesn't matter if it's a good film. That's why you see marketing campaigns saying 'just try it' - even if the product is crap they still make 1 sale. The film is getting such incredible hype a huge amount the profits will be in the opening night. Check out the Rotten Tomatoes score: critics are divided on whether it's a good film, but 96% of people want to see it. If Sony don't release the film eventually internationally, they'll lose money - but withholding it makes it a scarce commodity, drives hype etc. What you are now reading about The Interview isn't politics, it's PR crisis management. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/?search=the%20interview http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/?search=t...
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    Sure. But hence my point about opening weekend (trial) vs. what happens after opening weekend (ongoing business, lifetime earnings). You can drive trial of a bad product, but it's extremely hard to get people to keep coming back, or to tell others it's worth seeing. So your bad product + ultra-hype is basically a recipe for a big opening with extreme decay every day thereafter. This usually isn't enough to recoup the production, print & advertising costs of a major movie, especially when you factor in profit-sharing and other cuts to top-line revenue (Rogen and Goldberg are almost assuredly getting points on the movie's gross, and it's possible that Franco is, too.) A general rule of thumb is that a movie studio spends at least as much on prints and advertising ("P&A") as it does on production costs for the movie itself. That is to say, if the movie cost $35M to make, Sony sunk another $35M or more into P&A. So it would need to earn more than $70M to break even (more than that, because everyone's taking points off the top-line gross, plus profit-sharing with theaters and distributors, etc.). Is it possible that Sony could earn that much on this sort of movie, given its notoriety? Maybe, maybe not. Notoriety alone can rarely get you to $70M. (It's possible, but unlikely.) To stand a better chance, your movie also needs to be halfway decent. Once again, I have no idea if this movie is good or bad. Just saying this for the sake of explanation.
    - BillFranklin 12y ago
      Surely if the movie is bad this (http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30589472 http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30589472) is still an incredibly good launch by world class pr people. If the movie is good then it's still a good launch and will make money afterwards. The thing about bad movies is you can only make money on the opening weekend - this marketing was free (+the original marketing costs already spent and ignoring the lasting costs of being hacked) so the ROI will be incredibly good. Any film that caused the president to give a speech about it pre-release is going to do well on the opening weekend - I still don't think it matters if it turns out its a bad film or not, but I can't wait for the data. I guess it will be here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_(2014_film) And total costs around <$100m (again discounting hack). This also isn't taking into account the ROI from turning Sony into the victim in this scenario - not a massive company with a tiny, unsophisticated infosec team who messed up big time by not investing more in security.