EXCLUSIVE: Shortly after Deadline revealed that New Regency had scrapped a project he planned to direct with Steve Carell with a North Korea setting, director Gore Verbinski has expressed his frustration that his movie was a casualty of the unprecedented hack attack and terrorist threat that caused Sony to cancel the theatrical release of The Interview after theater chains refused to show it. Word I’m getting from Fox is they hadn’t committed to fund the film, which Verbinski informed me was called Pyongyang, but they did decline to distribute it in the wake of recent events but didn’t stand in the way of it going elsewhere. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen.
Here is the statement by Verbinski, who launched the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and most recently directed The Lone Ranger and the Oscar winning Rango:
Re: Pyongyang
Recent Comments
Getting the facts straight:
Yesterday, I was told by New Regency and Fox that Fox will no longer be distributing the film. Prior to that, the film was green lit and fully funded by New Regency with Fox distributing. I have been told in no uncertain words that based on the situation at Sony, Fox has now decided to not distribute the film. Without a distributor, New Regency was forced to shut the film down.
My thoughts:
I find it ironic that fear is eliminating the possibility to tell stories that depict our ability to overcome fear.
Gore Verbinski
Earth’s #1 marxist death camp/gulag/failure now controls American entertainment choices. Fantastic.
Brilliant summation.
Agree, it’s a Damn shame what happened today
And so it begins! Drip, drip, drip…
Amen. My thoughts:
I find it ironic that fear is eliminating the possibility to tell stories that depict our ability to overcome fear.
Gore Verbinski. I completely agree. Namaste.
Nicely put in a few words. I will watch your film when you find a new distributor. Shame on FOX.
…. I wonder what would had happened if Hitler threatened Hollywood back than when Chaplin made the brilliant film THE DICTATOR…. sad state we’re in to give in to terrorist demands!
Didn’t Chaplin actually send the movie to Hitler from what I’ve heard around the net?
and even more so Hitler actually enjoyed the film as a comedy and was a big Chaplin fan.
Can I have my seven bucks for Lone Ranger back?
You only paid seven bucks?! It’s fifteen here!
id bet you didnt even see it, just joining in with the hipper than thou critics.
i saw it and enjoyed it bunches.
I like it too. I also loved John Carter. Too bad the NAME of the film killed what was actually the original Star Wars tale (even according to John Lucas).
I really liked John Carter too. But it isn’t the original Star Wars tale, it just helped inspire the genre, the pulp fiction novels. It led to Flash Gordon, which led to Star Trek and Star Wars.
And I think you meant George Lucas. John Lucas is a basketball player.
At any rate, I thought Taylor Kitsch was great, so were the rest of the cast, especially Purefoy, Defoe, Cranston and Strong. Too bad we won’t get a sequel, or that it didn’t revive the pulp scifi/fantasy genre. Would love to see another Flash Gordon.
It’s happening, filmmakers will not take shots at Marxist, Islamic or other dictatorial movements….they are afraid. Sad and scary.
Why do you think it’s a good thing to go poking at mentally unstable people with weapons? ‘Filmmakers’ are free to do whatever they want; that doesn’t mean they are entitled to funding from publicly traded companies.
agreed.
Yes, it’s a shame all these other little puny countries have the means to defend themselves now. It was so much better when we could say whatever we wanted about them and they couldn’t do anything about it. Don’t get me wrong, North Korea, ISIS, the Taliban, et. al, are horrific and terrifying regimes, but for every American studio movie that depicts the struggles going on in these nations in any sort of meaningful, thoughtful, or humanistic way there are twenty that portray them simply as garden variety criminals or terrorists or buffoons. Here’s an idea: for Olympus White House Down Has Fallen 2 we make the bad guys insane militia gun-hoarding terrorists from rural California or Oklahoma rather than nameless evil furreners from some continent 98% of us have never been to. The nuts in this country have a much better chance of doing real damage to us in the future than any of the other baddies we like to imagine. Let’s shine a light on them for a while and give the brown/beige people a rest.
Sorry to bang on your post, which I’m sure was made in good faith and in the tradition of a lot of the great art this country as produced that has brought about positive political advancements in the world, but perhaps the message in all this is we start thinking a little harder about how we portray other countries in our movies and show a little empathy other than the one scene where the evil maniac terrorist talks about his dog. “The Interview” was just the tip of the spear of the stupidity in ways we present our media to other nations about other nations. This horrible attack on Sony can either be a learning moment or it can be a wrap-ourselves-in-the-flag moment where we really only exacerbate the issues that lead to this sort of crap in the first place. We’re not alone on an island anymore.
A-effing-men. I couldn’t agree more.
I’d choose to live in rural California or Oklahoma over North Korea every time, what about you? Those rednecks are real scary, but they’re not making news with beheadings and 9/11 style threats.
I take the threat on Sony to be a chilling effect on free speech, no matter what kind of speech (good or bad) it is.
It only reaffirmed my opinion that the North Korean state is a thug.
Name one scary redneck. (Besides Hillary Clinton, I mean).
…ugh so pointless in responding…it’s stupid movie about a worthless society occupying Earth as a proxy for China…should have taken care of both when we had the chance in the early 1950s.
Indeed
Quite right. It’s vitally important that these countries be able to “defend themselves” from comedies starring James Franco et al.”
And you’re right, we definitely need to show more empathy for nations who murder schoolchildren or who starve their own people to advance their weapons program.
Say, you don’t happen to serve on Obama National Security Council? Seems like you’d fit right in.
Well said. I completely agree.
Oh great teacher, please teach us the ways of your wisdom.
If I looked up “sanctimonious” in the Oxford, will I find your face there?
Yes, not at the risk of the american movie going public. This in not a freedom of
speech issue this is a public safety issue!. Imagine if Sony did put out the movie and God forbid a theater was attacked and people got hurt. the lawsuits to Sony would be piled to the sky… and for what? 9/11 has more than proved America is not invincible. and the Sony hacking has more than proved the threat and indeed sophisticated. if it’s between art and public safety… i choose safety.
You give into bullies they push you more.
ITS NOT A SIGN OF WEAKNESS TO AVOID DISASTER!
Yes it is, Tony. That’s exactly what weakness is.
Do you also support the TSA? Let’s say they have prevented one plane crash. More people than that have died because they now choose to drive cities that are close together (before 9/11 we often hopped on planes like Europeans do on trains .. no two hour ordeal at the airport to get on a plane to travel to a city two hours away by automobile). By the way, if everyone was still allowed to carry onboard knives and handguns, as my father used to do until 1967, there would not be another plane crash. Those did not start happening until the passengers were disarmed.
And if you avoid the street they walk down, you don’t get beaten up.
Go read your Ben Franklin, it’s been quoted enough I’ll give you a search helper, it’s about trading freedom for security
I’d like to note that you just made the scariest argument in the history of the United States (and yes, this argument has been proposed before): namely, that public safety is more important than freedom of speech, or any other freedom for that matter.
This is terrifying, because it’s well-meaning enough to gain traction, but leads to terrible, unintended things. Japanese internment camps, for example.
If it’s between art and public safety, do not choose public safety and leave it at that. That’s a terrible idea.
Bless you.
It sounds to me like New Regency is throwing Fox under the bus for a movie Fox has no stake in.
This is just the beginning dear industry. What is to stop anyone — ISIS, Russia, Narco Traffickers — from adopting this highly successful technique? Think we tend toward the shallow now? We’ll only be able to address outrages of the past while the present will be beyond comment. This is a pathetic, horrible day for anyone who considers our industry capable of art and aspires to be relevant. Money will be made as it always is but commentary the contemporary world (even satire!) will be increasingly marginalized.
The Studios dropped California workers like a hot potato for kickbacks & TAX CREDITS – Could this be KARMA
just saying
If North Korea offers a 40% kickback the studios will shoot there next
Hey Rogan –
Do the “Interview 2” – Assassinate BB Nitanyaho
The problem is that theatrical movies have become the equivalent of family oriented theme park rides and the companies that distribute and exhibit movies don’t want to be caught up in this kind of controversy or risk. It is unfortunate or even tragic that the cinema is no longer a forum for real political discourse or truly controversial ideas, but it really hasn’t been that for a long time, and realistically, there are many more forms and forums for communication and the expression of ideas available to the public than ever before. Well, unless you live in a place like North Korea.
Fight on Gore Verbinski
All this griping about a so-called loss of “freedom of speech.” When was Hollywood ever a bastion of free thinking and freedom of speech? Wake up! It’s a BUSINESS run by very frightened, greedy, sociopathic idiots who are only in it to take every nickel off the table and stuff it into their pockets. There’s no loss of anything. Nothing new is happening here.
21st Century Despotic Murderer shutting down Hollywood Cowards … oh well, I guess there is always The Three Stooges in THEY STOOGE TO CONGA —> back when men were men apparently ~
Ah yes. From the man who brought you “The Lone Ranger”. If only that had been based in North Korea.
GET OVER IT.
MAKE ANOTHER FILM THAT MEANS SOMETHING THIS TIME.
Could you make the film as an independent? I’d bet there would be lots of people who would buy into your film, especially after recent events with Sony and now Fox.
Marvel ought to think long and hard about releasing Avengers: Age of Ultron, lest they piss off sentient machines everywhere.
Oh come on. We’re not afraid of North Korea, we’re afraid of the litigation that would result if a home-grown nut walks into a movie theater and shoots the place up. And you know that, with the guaranteed publicity storm, someone would.
Ugh, going forward ALL the bad guys in Hollywood films are going to be American white male southerners. You know, we DO have a lot of expert hackers residing here in Austin Texas.