Paramount
Either they know something we don’t, or Hollywood is proving itself to be the most paranoid business in the world this week as New Regency has shelved a North Korea-themed project in the wake of the country’s top theater chains refusing to show The Interview after the Guardians Of Peace hacking scare.
New Regency has pulled the plug on the Steve Carell movie “Pyongyang,” which Gore Verbinski had been prepping for a March start date, an individual familiar with the project has told TheWrap.
Based on the graphic novel by Guy Delisle, “Pyongyang” is a comedic film about a Westerner’s experiences working in North Korea for a year. [TheWrap]
Officially, no one’s sure whether North Korea is behind the “Guardians of Peace,” but we’re clearly working under the assumption that they are. Getting hacked by a country whose propaganda computer lab is filled with 30 people staring at a static Google page is more embarrassing than Watergate, and this news has me longing for the days when MGM changed the villain in the Red Dawn remake to North Korea to avoid offending China. Who is the acceptable villain/clown now, Belarus? Equatorial Guinea? When Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator, he sent it to Hitler’s damned house.
Meanwhile, Sony is reportedly “weighing” putting the movie out on VOD, which makes sense, considering that’s what everyone’s currently shouting at them to do. But would that even be a symbolic victory? Getting to watch a silly movie from the comfort of our couches? I mean, it’d certainly be an American kind of victory…
I still haven’t seen the film, but I’m expecting an interesting speech before tonight’s press screening.