‘The Interview’ Hits Theaters: Alamo Drafthouse Austin Screenings Sold Out

Refresh for latest news on The Interview hitting theaters today.

UPDATE, 9:15 AM: The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin is reporting that every showing of The Interview today is sold out. KXAN in Austin says Alamo Drafthouse CEO Tim League will be introducing the film at the 1 PM screening. “This is the best Christmas gift anyone could give us,” said League earlier in a statement. “We, both distributors and exhibitors, have collectively stood firm to our principles and for the right to freedom of expression.”

PREVIOUS: Los Angeles’ Silent Movie Theatre run by nonprofit Cinefamily kicked off the run of Sony Pictures’ The Interview at 12:35 AM this morning with a sold-out screening of the controversial political comedy. By all accounts the atmosphere was world premiere-like, and included carolers, local news vans and an intro to the film by star-director Seth Rogen and his co-director Evan Goldberg. See the Facebook video above.

“If it wasn’t for theaters like this and people like you, this wouldn’t be f*cking happening,” Rogen told the crowd.

It’s likely this scene will be repeated in many of the 331 other theaters playing the pic, after Sony reversed course Tuesday and struck a deal with indie exhibitors to release the pic after scrapping its original Christmas Day release amid threats from Sony’s hackers. Those venues though will be competing with a day-and-date VOD release that kicked off yesterday, in which Sony made the pic available via YouTube Movies, Google Play, Xbox and its own dedicated site for a $5.99 rental. The latter experienced a few hiccups early on after the 10 AM release, with The Verge reporting people who rented the movie over 48 hours were able to share the URL while an unprotected copy could be saved. Kernel, a company behind the site, was working on a fix last night.

The film is currently unavailable overseas (though it was made available eventually yesterday in Canada). But pirates predictably wasted little time splashing the movie on file-sharing sites globally — TorrentFreak reported that at least 200,000 people had downloaded the title within the first 10 hours.