It’s a tale as old as time: Entertainment company makes movie, hackers threaten company over movie’s release, movie debuts online anyway and grosses millions of dollars. Sony Entertainment says that after peddling The Interview online, it’s made $15 million in rentals and sales of the Seth Rogen/James Franco flick.

Sony Entertainment is apparently turning lemons into lemonade, touting the fact that The Interview was rented or bought more than two million times over the four days between its release and Saturday as a win, calling it the “#1 online film of all time,” reports the AFP.

The company at first decided to pull the movie from theaters after hackers threatened some kind of attack, a move the U.S. government says was orchestrated by North Korea. In the flick, Rogen and Franco are part of an assassination attempt aimed at North Korean’s leader, Kim Jong-Un.

About 330 independent movie houses also offered the film after Sony gave the go-ahead late last week, reversing its earlier decision to yank it. Those showings pulled in about $1.8 million over the weekend, in addition to $1 million in a limited Christmas Day release, says Exhibitor Relations.

So what do these numbers mean? Well, they’re pretty close to what the movie likely would’ve made during its opening weekend anyway, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations told Reuters.

“That is a huge number,” he explained of the almost $18 million figure across online and in-theater sales.

“This is almost what it was going to do theatrically before it was pulled. It made about what people expected, but in a completely different way.”

‘Interview’ rakes in more than $15 million online [AFP]
Sony’s ‘The Interview’ makes $18 million in opening weekend [Reuters]

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