release. i wish they had spoken to me first. reporter: tonight, a growing number of independent theaters announcing that they will be showing the movie and it could just be the tip of the iceberg. sony s lawyer said that the company is not being bag down. sony only delayed this. sony has been fighting to get this picture distributed. it will be distributed. reporter: now the stars of the interview speaking out on social media. james franco posting victory, the people and the president have spoken. in a statement, sony s ceo michael lynton said, we re excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on christmas day. as tensions are heightened between the united states and north korea, which the u.s. blames for the hack, reports
screenings on christmas day ignoring threats from the hackers, sony ceo michael lynton said, quote, we have never given up on releasing the interview and we re excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on christmas day. let s bring in the owner of the plaza theater in atlanta, one of the theaters that s going to be screening this film on thursday. how did this come about, the decision to go ahead, get the film, permission to get the film and to go ahead and screen it, michael? well, we originally were scheduled on the first go-round before it was pulled. and last night around 11:00 p.m. our time, we got a call from sony saying that they were ready to go. and i have sent them e-mails over the last couple of days saying if they ever change their mind, we were in 100%. and lo and behold it happened last night around 11:00. and you have a historic theater there in midtown atlanta, right? it is. it s the oldest historic running
lines. but we re a large theater. we only have two screens but we have large auditoriums. it s easier for us to manage loud crowds like this. we re used to doing it. we do a lot of premiers and such. so we re used to dealing with the crowds and the few security things we are going to put in that are different, i don t think anybody will be offended by and we re ready and we re going to be smart about it. and michael, i know there are ton of people now, you may not have gotten the kind of crowd that you re going to get on christmas without all of the publicity here. are people skittish about going? i would say half are skittish and the other are enthusiastic. it s almost as if they want to do their civic duty to come see this picture because it s about never having censorship when it comes to films, books. it should be up to the
won, the people of the united states won. there s nothing worse than censorship or blackmail, especially when it comes to the arts. you don t have to like it. you have to pay to come see a film. so that s why i m excited. michael, we ll stay in close touch. i want to hear how many people show up. i assume it s going to be a big, big crowd on christmas day. thanks very much for what you re doing. the owner of the plaza theater in midtown atlanta. good luck. thank you. merry christmas and happy new year. still ahead, the new jersey governor chris christie says normal relations with cuba should be off the table until that country returns a convicted american cop killer. we ll hear from a top cuban official in havana. we ll get her response to what chris christie is demanding. stay with us. get ready for some german engineered holiday excitement. at the volkswagen sign-then-drive event. right now, for practically just your signature, you could drive home for the holidays in a new v
and now we see theaters are going to go ahead with this. do we think that north korea will react in any way? what do we suspect? well, certainly i don t think there s a high likelihood that there will be 9/11 attacks on theaters coming from north korea. it s going to anger them in some way but, frankly, north korea is behaving so terribly, even worse than usual, i really can t imagine how we could have any worse relations with north korea. but at the same time, now that the movie is being released and hats off to wonderful people like michael in atlanta and others around the country, we have a real opportunity in this country not just to talk about freedom of expression here but also to talk about the terrible human rights conditions in north korea. the u.n. issued a report earlier in the year accusing the north korean regime of being guilty of crimes against humanity. they have upwards of 120,000