Relax, Sony, it's being handled. Or, well...sort of. The word in Hollywood is that Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal has hired Judy Smith, the crisis manager on whom Scandal's Olivia Pope is based, to advise the studio on their response to the hacker situation.
So glad we weren't the only ones wondering WWOPD?
According to TMZ, Smith & Company are consulting Pascal on the decision to pull The Interview from theaters in response to threats of violence against moviegoers. There has been mixed reaction to Sony, with both Barack Obama and George Clooney questioning whether bowing to the hackers was the right thing to do. TMZ says Smith's take is that Sony needs to reframe this as a threat against the industry as a whole, not just one company. It also needs to emphasize that it canceled the film's release for the sake of its employees' safety.
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Of course, this advice would sound much more decisive if we could see Olivia deliver it in gorgeous white coat.
In other Sony hack news, North Korea's latest PR move is to deny the FBI's accusation that the government is directly responsible for the hack. A spokesperson for Pyongyang called for a joint probe into the cyberattack and warned, "If the U.S. refuses to accept our proposal for a joint investigation and continues to talk about some kind of response by dragging us into the case, it must remember there will be grave consequences."
Though Sony has vowed to look for other ways to distribute The Interview, it was simultaneously pulling down billboards and deleting the movie's websites and social media accounts on Friday and Saturday.
Meanwhile, one brave soul over at Mashable has risked the wrath of both North Korea (or whoever) and Sony by posting a long, spoilery synopsis of The Interview, in case we never get to see it.
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