Do you remember comedy movie The Interview? That was the one where Seth Rogen and James Franco visited North Korea, and it caused quite a stir. Rogen has commented on what happened, claiming that Hollywood was quite shook by the action movie.
“It really caused seismic shifts in Hollywood at the time,” he tells the Hawk and Wolf podcast. “How business was done in some ways, it actually showed the success a movie can have in some ways, if it has a full theatrical campaign and then went straight to streaming. It’s still the biggest movie that ever streamed on Google.”
The controversy surrounding The Interview went considerably deeper than that. The depiction of North Korea, and leader Kim Jong-Un as a movie villain, didn’t go down especially well. Sony actually delayed the release of the thriller movie, reportedly in order to make changes in post-production to soften some of the satire.
In the film, Rogen is a producer, Aaron Rapaport, for an obnoxious chat show host, Dave Skylark, played by Franco. When Dave’s show is criticised for not being actual news, they decide to visit North Korea to do some current affairs reporting.
Their visit is a strange one, and they get their audience with Kim Jong-Un, but it doesn’t go quite as planned. The adventure movie is now widely available, as they point out on the podcast, so all of this has since died down.
Check out our new movies guide to see what’s coming out, and our list of the best comedy series for more laughs.