The movie is at the center of the Sony Pictures hack in November. Rogen and James Franco star as two journalists who score an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong un and are recruited by the CIA to assassinate him. Almost immediately after details of the movie became public, it was condemned by North Korea as an act of war, and of sponsoring terrorism.
While the FBI does not have hard evidence to link the mysterious state to the attack, security experts have found links and coincidences that suggest it. The group responsible for the attack also reportedly demanded the movie be cancelled.
Before this all happened however, Sony Pictures Entertainment boss Amy Pascal reportedly wrote to Seth Rogen by e-mail and asked him to tone down one particularly gruesome scene. The e-mails were first revealed by Bloomberg.
Rogen was resistant, even stating that "this is now a story of Americans changing their movie to make North Koreans happy, that is a very damning story."
According to Pascal, the request came all the way from Sony Corp chairman Kazuo Hirai.
In the end Rogen did remove some ghoulish detail, but very little and kept the scene that the studio was concerned about largely intact. News outlets are more descriptive of the scene, but we decided not to include descriptions because some find them to be spoilers.
Written by: James Delahunty @ 11 Dec 2014 13:43
