Ten years after the Sony Pictures hack became an international incident involving North Korea, cyberwarfare, and a Seth Rogen comedy, former Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton is finally sharing what happened behind closed doors—including Barack Obama's pointed question about the whole mess.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lynton calls greenlighting The Interview—a comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-un—the biggest mistake of his career. And Obama's first words to him after the hack? "What were you thinking?"
Fair question, honestly.
For those who need a refresher: In December 2014, hackers believed to be working for North Korea infiltrated Sony's servers, leaked thousands of emails, threatened terrorist attacks on theaters showing the film, and created a geopolitical crisis that somehow involved James Franco and Seth Rogen pretending to be journalists.
The hack exposed embarrassing internal communications, racist jokes about Obama from studio executives, salary negotiations revealing massive gender pay gaps, and basically every piece of dirty laundry a major studio tries to keep hidden. The damage to Sony's reputation and operations cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
And all of it because Sony decided to make a movie about killing a sitting world leader. A comedy. About assassination. Starring the guys from Pineapple Express.
Lynton now admits the studio should have anticipated the blowback. "We thought we were making a satirical comedy," he told .
