Seth Rogen: ‘The Interview’ Caused ‘Seismic Shifts’ in Hollywood, “Catastrophic”

Seth Rogen is reflecting on a movie that caused a lot of backlash.

Seth Rogen was the main character along with James Franco in The Interview, which was supposed to be a world-theater premiere but ended up being digitally purchased.

The Sony-back comedy film featured “Americans tasked by the CIA with assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, infamously played a role in the Sony hack, in which data and emails from Sony employees were leaked online.” Soon after, hackers demanded Sony withdraw The Interview’s theatrical release. The studio then faced threats from North Korea, which is why the film skipped a nationwide release.

On Tony Hawk’s Hawk vs. Wolf podcast, Rogen said, “At the time, it was really bad and really catastrophic.”

“People we knew were getting fired from it. The head of the studio [Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal] was essentially fired from it. It really caused seismic shifts in Hollywood at the time, and I think how business was done in some ways…It kind of showed the success a movie could have in some ways if it has a full theatrical campaign and then immediately go to streaming. It streamed on Google, and I think it’s still the biggest movie that’s ever streamed on Google, which is crazy. Students come up to me and say they’re teaching it in their university class. It was wild.”

Rogen admitted the fallout was controversial, adding, “After that, I was like, now I know what it’s like. Unless the president is giving news conferences about it, that’s controversy. If someone is getting mad about it on social media, that’s not controversy. Having like the U.N. have to make a statement about it, that’s a controversy.”

“What’s crazy is now it’s on television,” Rogen concluded. “It’s on FX at 2 p.m. It was at one point the most controversial thing in the world, and now I’ll be flipping channels on a Sunday afternoon, and it’s just playing. I was worried maybe it would cause some longer-lasting fallout than it did.”