Back in 2014, Seth Rogen and James Franco were under fire for The Interview, a film about two journalists who get hired by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Hackers known as the Guardians of Peace got into Sony Pictures' computers and released private e-mails. They also threatened to carry out an attack on the New York City premiere in addition to any movie theater showing the movie. The premiere was then moved to Los Angeles but hackers continued their threats, causing Rogen and Franco to cancel their appearances, Sony to pull all of their television ads, and for the wide release to be canceled.
But four years later, Rogen says he doesn't feel guilty about what happened. (They start speaking about it at the 01:11:00 mark)
"I don’t feel as bad about that as you would think," Rogen said on Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert (as pointed out by Uproxx). "Because the head of Sony was explicitly warned about the likelihood of a hack in a meeting I was in, and they proceeded to do nothing about it...I don’t know if it was my fault."
He continued: "The hacking itself is not something that we took on because Sony was always getting hacked. They are notoriously hated by hackers. They did this thing in the 90s where people were ripping off CDs, so Sony created a CD that would destroy your computer if you tried to copy it in a way was illegal, which is why hackers have always hated them. It’s why PlayStations are always being hacked...they’re just known for being a company that hackers don’t like."
Although Rogen admits the whole ordeal was a "very traumatic experience" especially since he was "worried that people will forever have filed us away in their heads alongside something that was not funny." But when, The Night Before, came out the next year, he started to feel better. "We're over the hump. It's not the worst thing. It's not the best thing. We're back to business as usual."
