This was a terrible idea. I was thinking last night that maybe......

"Lowly bookstore clerks fought to keep selling The Satanic Verses when their parent chains wanted to quit, but who the f*ck wants to risk death for James Franco and Seth Rogen? Even Rogen wouldn't. (True, Franco might. But you can sell him on anything so long as it's conceptual.) It sticks in my craw that the principle is the same."

David Atkins, writing at Digby's:

But in truth, neither "America" nor "Hollywood" caved to the terrorist threat. Capitalism did. Sony is a Japanese-owned multinational corporation. Its decision to cancel the opening of the film was precipitated not by Hollywood studios, but by the defensive decision of a bunch of corporate conglomerate theater chains with only tenuous connections to the star-studded production companies in Tinseltown.

An organization made a threat to a corporation and its customers if it released a certain product. Distributors of said product decided not to risk carrying that product, as a market decision. The corporation decided to pull the product from shelves--for market reasons.

That's capitalism. Capitalism doesn't care about standing for the principle of free speech, or for patriotism, or for standing up to bullies. It cares about money. Theater chains don't make money if they lose customers too afraid to show up to the movie theaters. Production companies don't make money if not enough theaters show their movie. It's just business.

If conservatives want to see a little more backbone in standing up to international bullies looking to squash free speech, they might want to start by looking in the mirror at their ideological elevation of profit over principle.

I don't condone in the slightest what North Korea has allegedly done here. From reports today, the cyberattack on Sony Pictures was both extensive and very destructive, with damage well beyond the public relations fiasco created by the divulgence of its executives' embarrassing e-mail threads. But in their decision to green-light such a dubious project, those same executives proved themselves to be just as insensitive, crass and stupid as they sounded on their hacked e-mails.

How could those executives not have anticipated and planned for such a possible contingency, given that North Korea had first expressed its extreme displeasure over "The Interview" months ago? Not only did their callous indifference to diplomatic sensitivities put their entire firm at risk, they played an enormously consequential (if entirely unintended) role in fomenting a major international incident and potential national security crisis.

And the damnedest thing about this entire brouhaha is that "The Interview" is likely every bit as insipid and lousy a movie as its trailer implies. In fact, it's presently garnering a 44% rating at the Rotten Tomatoes website, hardly surprising since Variety describes the film as "an evening of cinematic waterboarding." The only ones I can see who liked it were the Brits.

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
  To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
  Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
  And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
  And then  you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
  To puff and look important and to say: --
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
  We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
  But we've  proved it again and  again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
  You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
  For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
  You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
  No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
  And the nation that pays it is lost!"

Why didn't Sony just release it to cable "On Demand", Netflix, iTunes and Amazon?

Ex-Anonymous hacker questions North Korea's role in Sony hack

Wiki: Internet in North Korea

Taking Cuba Off Blacklist Leaves Only North Korea as Cold War Vestige

North Korea's Cyber Skills Get Attention Amid Sony Hacking Mystery

Who really hacked Sony Pictures? (It probably wasn't North Korea)

There's also the overall timeline of the hack to take into consideration. The hackers managed to exfiltrate around 100 terabytes of data from Sony's network -- an arduous task that, to avoid detection, probably took months. Given how long it would've taken to gain access to Sony Pictures, plus the time to exfiltrate the data, I think the wheels started turning long before North Korea heard about The Interview.