look, i believe that this particular breach could bring down a major u.s. company. which is significant. the other big thing the american way of life when it comes to the simplicity of families that go to a movie on christmas day. so theater owners decide not to show this film because other parents could be taking their kids to see annie in the theater next door. so those that are fonot even gog to see the movie the interview don t want to show up at a theater showcasing this film because of the threats that have been made against theater owners. so the collective tissue here seems to be bigger than this data. there s a big issue now about bowing to terrorism. i believe that it was precedent setting in a negative way. but sitting in michael lynton s shoes. the theaters pulled the release of the movie. there were violent threats
forward, fully releasing the interview, although that s really in question whether they did that. take rob lowe who makes a cameo appearance in the movie. wow. everyone caved. the hackers won. an utter and complete victory for them. wow. but the host of us weekly, did it not get released, where can i see this movie? on wednesday of last week, sony issued the following comment, which is that we have no future plans to release this movie. then barack obama said that s a mistake. and so michael lynton told cnn, no, we did not cave. we re trying to find a way to
in another cnn tv exclusive, sony s ceo responded to president obama s criticism of the company s decision. michael lynton told cnn s fareed zakaria sony has not caved in to hackers. the president says sony made a mistake in pulling the film. did you make a mistake ? no. i think actually the unfortunate part is in this instance the president, the press, and the public are mistaken as to what actually happened. we do not own movie theaters. we cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters. so to sort of rehearse for a moment the sequence of events, we experienced the worst cyber attack in american history and persevered for 3 1/2 weeks under enormous stress and enormous difficulty.
pursue that objective throughout this period. yes, we were thwarted at the end when the theaters chose not to show the movie, but the objective remained very clear in everyone s mind throughout the process. when we come back, i will ask michael lynton whether as a supporter of the president he was disappoint eed by what he heard from him. nearly half a million cars were stolen in 2012, but for every car stolen, 34 people had their identities stolen. identity thieves can steal your money, damage your credit, and wreak havoc on your life. why risk it when you can help protect yourself from identity theft with one call to lifelock, the leader in identity-theft protection? lifelock actively patrols your sensitive, personal information every second of every day, helping to guard your social security number, your bank accounts and credit, even the equity in your home your valuable personal assets. look.
we are back with my exclusive interview with the ceo of sony pictures michael lynton about the north korean hack attack against his company and the threat of terrorism. michael, let me ask you to go through the sequence of what happened. when did you first realize that you had a problem? the first time we understood that there was an issue with the north koreans was back in june of last summer when they came forward with various e-mails and statements and actually i think they were in touch with the white house itself and described their disfavor with the movie. at that point in time we actually reached out to experts at various at think tanks,