January 02, 2015 Issue

Los Angeles - Workers remove a billboard advertisement for The Interview on December 18, a day after Sony Pictures announced it was canceling the movie’s Christmas release. Theater chains refused to handle the film after a terrorist threat promised 9/11-style attacks if it was screened. Sony also quietly canceled plans for Pyongyang, another film based in North Korea, which was to star Steve Carell as an American worker in the Communist country; filming was to begin in March. For weeks Sony was attacked by hackers, who released a massive dump of Sony data on the Internet, including private communications, details about unreleased films, scripts, Social Security numbers and passwords. FBI investigators traced the hack to malware developed in North Korea, and President Obama said the U.S. would “respond proportionally.”