The Interview – Beesquared

The cyberattacks on Sony may be remembered for more than hackers rummaging through systems at one of the world’s top studios.

Distribution of “The Interview” in the aftermath of the cyberattack also marks a milestone in the movement of movies to streaming services and away from theaters. Sony’s announcement that it would stream the film in the US via three online services means that many people will have watched the comedy on their computers. Though Sony also released the film to about 300 theaters, that’s roughly 2,700 fewer screens than planned to show it originally.

The unfolding of events presents theater owners with a tricky test that may accelerate the arrival of a time when studios release movies to streaming services and theaters simultaneously.

“We’re watching ‘The Interview’ online tonight at 10:00 p.m.,” a boy of about 14 told two friends Wednesday at a Starbucks in Manhattan. While results of the box office remain to be seen, theater owners, who have warned for years of the disruption headed their way, seem likely to face more such sentiment.

https://twitter.com/TheInterview/status/547817336485711872

The latest drama has unfolded in ways that few theater owners or anyone for that matter anticipated. Theaters owners, faced with threats to their audiences if they screened the film as they anticipated originally, decided to delay the debut.

That produced a backlash all the way to the White House, where President Obama slammed Sony for pulling the picture. Sony said that the theater chains cancelled the booking. The chains charged they had been sold out by Sony.

Still, the dustup pales compared with the threat theater owners face from the move of entertainment to many screens from the silver screen. Though seeing a movie in a theater has its delights, the prospect of schlepping to a theater is giving way to the convenience of watching a film from on-demand services such as iTunes, Netflix and others.

The drama over distribution of “The Interview” may foretell a future that theater owners have been fearing. As Jason Lynch explains in Quartz:

“For years, premium video on-demand has been a white whale for studios, which have been unable to convince theater chain owners to grant any leeway in their traditional 90-day exclusive window after a film’s theatrical release. Those exhibitors have good reason to be worried: This year’s North American movie ticket sales fell 4%, to $10.5 billion, and one of the most reliable moviegoing demographics, kids and young adults ages 12 to 24, went to the movies 15% less often.”

At issue is a shrinking of the period between the release of a film to theaters and its availability via streaming, DVD and other platforms. As of September 25, the window averaged three months and 27 days, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade group. That’s down from roughly five months and 22 days in 1997.

The window matters to the profitability of moviemakers and theater owners, who all say they will see their profits shrink if the window continues to shorten.

Not surprisingly, the two camps find themselves on the same side of the issue. According to a letter signed in 2011 by 31 filmmakers, including Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, among others:

“Major studios are struggling to replace the revenue lost by the declining value of DVD transactions. Low-cost rentals and subscriptions are undermining higher priced DVD sales and rentals. But the problem of declining revenue in home video will not be solved by importing into the theatrical window a distribution model that cannibalizes theatrical ticket sales.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars happen to be at stake, according to the group, which calls on the studio not to alter the “sequential distribution window” that forces moviegoers to see films in theaters first.

The theater chains adopt a similar stance. “We believe that a material contraction of the current theatrical release window could significantly dilute the consumer appeal of the in-theatre motion picture offering, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations,” Regal Entertainment Group, the largest exhibitor of films in the U.S. and Canada, wrote in its most recent annual report.

Of course, the straight-to-streaming of “The Interview” may foreshadow a reckoning for theater owners that industries from music to media continue to confront. Last spring, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, predicted a three-week window within a decade:

“A movie will come out and you will have 17 days, that’s exactly three weekends, which is 95% of the revenue for 98% of movies. On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size. A movie screen will be $15. A 75” TV will be $4.00. A smartphone will be $1.99. That enterprise that will exist throughout the world, when that happens, and it will happen, it will reinvent the enterprise of movies.”

The attack on Sony has unearthed information about the studio that may be unflattering to its executives. But whatever slew of embarrassments and security headaches for Sony, the attack reminds us that for exhibitors, the worst may be yet to come.

The recent hack into systems at Sony Pictures Entertainment has spurred demands by the company that the news media refrain from publishing the plundered data.

On Sunday, lawyers for Sony delivered letters to news outlets insisting that they destroy the leaked emails, documents and other information in their possession. According to the letter, which the company’s lawyer, David Boies, sent on the studio’s behalf:

“The stolen information includes, but is not limited to, documents and information protected under U.S. and foreign legal doctrines protecting attorney-client privileged communications, attorney work product, and related privileges and protections, as well as private financial and other confidential information and communications of [Sony’s] current and former personnel and others, confidential personal data, intellectual property, trade secrets and other business secrets and related communications, and other confidential information.”

The description seems largely accurate, based on the leaks that have been reported. They include emails that contain disparaging comments by executives, information about the health of nearly three dozen employees and their families, and at least four unreleased films.

There’s reportedly more to come. The hackers, who call themselves Guardians of the Peace, claim to have taken 100 trillion bytes of documents and other material. Thus far they’ve released an estimated 235 gigabytes worth of files.

Sony’s demands on the press garnered support from some in the creative community. “As demented and criminal as it is, at least the hackers are doing it for a cause,” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin wrote in a Times op-ed. “The press is doing it for a nickel.”

Movie producer Judd Apatow compared publicizing the emails of Sony executives to publishing nude selfies of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities.

Releasing private Sony e mails to hurt people is the same as releasing nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence. Why are they ok to print?

— Judd Apatow 🇺🇦 (@JuddApatow) December 11, 2014

The news media itself wrestled with whether to publish the information. Andrew Wallenstein, co-editor-in-chief of Variety, considered a series of arguments before concluding that publishing the leaks is inevitable.

“Journalism is, in some sense, permissible thievery,” Wallenstein wrote last Thursday. “Occasionally we catch wind of what our subjects would rather us not know, and we don’t hesitate to report it if it contributes to an understanding of what we’re writing about.”

That’s not to condone the theft of information. One way to incentive hacking is to give hackers the expectation that whatever they put into the public domain will find news organizations ready to amplify it.

Still, like Wallenstein, I agree that the leaks – with the exception of personal information about the health or identities of specific people – deserve to be published. While the news media may, as Wallenstein notes, appear to be doing the hackers’ bidding, not publishing the information would be worse.

There’s little legal basis to refrain from publishing most of the information. Contrary to Boies’ assertion, the attorney-client privilege matters not at all here. The privilege applies in a judicial proceeding in which a lawyer may be called as a witness. In short, it holds that an attorney may not divulge matters communicated by a client in confidence.

David Boies cannot be forced to testify in court about matters communicated to him by his client Sony. But the privilege has nothing to do with the press.

Of course, the Constitution has everything to do with the press. Broadcasting a recording of a conversation that was picked up illegally is protected by the First Amendment.

Then there’s the apparent double standard implicit in Sony’s demand on the press to stop publishing. As Dawn Chmielewski, a reporter who covers the tech industry for Re/code, observed, referring to “The Interview,” the film from Sony that is said to have provoked the hacking:

“Sony has been talking about the importance of releasing this film and not being cowed, that the studio has a right to free expression under First Amendment concepts. So I find it interesting that now the same studio is serving journalists who are reporting on this devastating hack trying to curb our free expression rights here.”

Should the media stop reporting on the #Sony hacks? http://t.co/Xk7yy5TVwP @DawnC331 of @Recode weighs in: http://t.co/EEZKWICYMD

— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) December 16, 2014

Though hackers have dumped copyrighted movies onto file-sharing sites, news outlets have avoided republishing the material to an extent that would constitute infringement. Gawker, for example, published a 30-second clip of “The Interview,” which depicts as comedy a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. As Gawker sees it, the film has become newsworthy.

That judgment was affirmed late Wednesday, when Sony cancelled the film’s release. The move followed statements by theater owners that they would not show the movie, which has elicited threats of terror.

What about ethical arguments for refraining from publishing the leaked material?

Wallenstein distinguishes between reporting on the government and reporting on Sony, which of course is a corporation. “Both are sizable institutions, but am I, a journalist, entitled to see every last spreadsheet a private company has even if they were stolen just because I am reporting on Sony the way, say, Glenn Greenwald reports on Snowden?” he asks.

No, and yes.

In some ways, corporations hold as much sway over society as governments do with a fraction of the transparency. That’s true of Hollywood but it’s also true of the financial industry, the pharmaceutical industry and many others. The correspondence of U.S. presidents becomes public for everyone to read eventually. It’s hard to imagine a corporation giving the public access to the correspondence of a former CEO.

Business tends to be opaque. For all the financial results that companies file, press releases they issue and tweets they send, the fact remains that many companies control tightly the information that flows from them. The breakdown of a corporate spin machine is itself news.

It’s also impossible to report on the theft at Sony without describing what was stolen. As Wallenstein notes:

“Were a publication to report on the fact of the Sony hack and merely allude broadly to the data that has been disclosed, a tiptoe dance around the data itself begins. To convey the enormity of what Sony had stolen without any degree of specificity is to feel the quicksand pull of what’s so awfully hard to avoid here.”

Though he may have meant to type “enormousness,” Wallenstein has a point. It’s difficult to report a story about a hack without describing what was hacked. Reporting that an email exchange between Sony co-chairwoman Amy Pascal and movie producer Scott Rudin included disparaging comments by Rudin about Angelina Jolie would leave you asking the obvious question of what those comments happened to be. If I write that Rudin referred to Jolie as a “minimally talented spoiled brat,” you get it instantly.

What about Apatow’s argument? Is reporting the documents plundered by hackers tantamount to publish nude selfies of ingénues? Actually, the case for publishing the documents is much stronger. Publishing photos that someone never intended to be public violates her privacy solely for the purpose of gratifying others.

Publishing the details of business at Sony, on the other hand, sheds light on an industry. As Anne Helen Peterson writes in BuzzFeed:

“These conversations were private, but the art they produced has very public, if often sublimated, ramifications. The Lawrence hacks don’t contribute to any understanding save what Lawrence’s breasts look like. The Sony hacks speak loudly, and at length, about contemporary film industry and its generation of popular culture.”

Journalists use the term news judgment to refer to one’s ability to anticipate what does and does not constitute news. “These aren’t new challenges,” Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, told Peterson. “Some of the greatest revelations in American history have come from sources with dubious or outright destructive motives.”

As news judgment suggests, the media has the burden of weighing the capacity of information to substantiate and explain. That includes an obligation not to injure private citizens maliciously or recklessly. But it includes a responsibility to illuminate too.