Well, talk about a turnaround. A week ago The Interview was a mothballed movie, never to be seen. Now it’s unavoidable. After Sony Pictures quashed the movie, consigning it to a dusty shelf in Hollywood, it will now be available practically everywhere, and will no doubt be a huge hit (probably a far bigger hit than it deserves to be). Last week there were loud calls from all quarters (including President Obama, George R.R. Martin, Salman Rushdie, and, er, Rob Lowe) for moviegoers to be allowed to see the Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy, in a unanimous cry of ‘Up with Free Speech and Democracy and Down with North Korea.’
Late yesterday Sony announced that the movie will be released on Christmas Day after all (in a limited run of some 300 independent movie houses, including the Alamo Drafthouse, which had planned to show Team America: World Police instead, until Paramount got nervous about that idea). And this morning the studio announced that the movie will also be released on Video on Demand format, making it ridiculously available via platforms such as Google Play and You Tube.
