Ex Sony CEO Regrets Making Seth Rogen’s ‘The Interview’ After Hack
Michael Lynton, the former CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is looking back on the 2014 film The Interview with deep regret. In a recent excerpt from Lynton’s upcoming memoir From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You, published recently in the Wall Street Journal, he opens up about how greenlighting The Interview, a dark comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco about a plan to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was the “biggest mistake of my career,” because it led to the infamous Sony hack. Lynton was made aware on Nov. 17, 2014, by the head of IT reporting that 70 percent of Sony’s servers were irreparably damaged. Hackers released stolen emails that had confidential scripts and personal information. The FBI became involved with evidence suggesting that North Korea was most likely behind the attack to axe the release of the film. The movie was pulled from the U.S.’s major theater chains ahead of its Dec. 25 release after threats from hacker groups implied that moviegoers would be in …
