Sony plans limited release of ‘Interview’

Sony has announced a limited cinema release of The Interview, putting the comedy back on to screens after a huge international row.

Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive Michael Lynton said Seth Rogen’s North Korea farce “will be in a number of cinemas on Christmas Day”.

He said Sony is continuing its efforts to release the film on more platforms and in more cinemas.

Moviegoers celebrated the abrupt change of fortune for a film that had appeared doomed, as the title started popping up in the listings of a handful of independent cinemas.

After hackers on Wednesday threatened violence against cinemas showing the film, the US’s largest chains dropped the film, and Sony cancelled its release. That decision drew widespread criticism, including from President Barack Obama.

The FBI has said the cyber attacks on Sony came from North Korea.

Yesterday’s development came after several North Korean websites suffered an hours-long shutdown that followed a US vow to respond to the cyber attack on Sony.

Key North Korean websites were back online after a nearly 10-hour shutdown that followed a US vow to respond to a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the internet stoppage in one of the least-wired and poorest countries in the world, but experts said it could be anything from a cyberattack to a simple power failure. The White House declined to say whether the US government was responsible.

Even if a cyberattack had caused the shutdown, analysts said, it would largely be symbolic since only a tiny number of North Koreans are allowed on the internet — a fraction of Pyongyang’s staunchly loyal elite, as well as foreigners.

North Korea has barely 1,000 internet addresses, one internet service provider and one connection to the outside world via China.

Though it denies responsibility for the Sony hack, North Korea’s government has called it a “righteous deed” and made clear its fury over The Interview, a comedy that depicts the assassination of the North’s authoritarian leader, Kim Jong-Un, the head of a 1.2 million-man army and the focus of an intense cult of personality.

South Korean officials said the North’s official Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which are the main channels for official North Korean news, had both gone down. But the websites were back up hours later.