SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Proving the adult industry has either no fear or a death wish, a video-on-demand provider has asked Sony Pictures for permission to stream The Interview via its online television network. The mainstream Hollywood film was shelved one week prior to its planned Christmas Day release after Sony and theaters nationwide received terroristic threats from hackers possibly sponsored the North Korean government.
The Interview, a comedy, follows the misadventures of two tabloid-TV hosts recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
A spokesperson for SkweezMe.com, which launched in January, indicated webcasting The Interview would deliver a much-deserved “fuck you” to hackers who believe they can scare Americans into abandoning their civil rights by threatening to kill innocent civilians.
“Our streaming service is deployed on one of the largest servers in the world and can be accessed by anyone, anywhere,” the spokesperson said. “We firmly believe in freedom of artistic expression and freedom of speech, and we will not be bullied into silence on our own soil because of these impeding threats.
“We will gladly take The Interview and stream it online via our [revenue-share] model so Sony can try to recoup its investment, but more importantly, to show the world that we will not have our constitutional rights silenced,” the spokesperson continued. “For decades pornographers have fought our own government and been the canaries in the First Amendment coal mines. Pulling The Interview is the first step in a very slippery slope of censorship, and we are willing to step up and offer the movie to prevent American commerce and artistic expression to be silenced by a dictator 6,500 miles away.”
SkweezMe.com operates a hybrid of the Netflix and iTunes models, allowing users to purchase 99-cent tokens that unlock unlimited content on its platform for 24-hour periods. Consumers pay only for the days they use the service, without recurring payments or monthly membership fees.
“The business model, which was the first of its kind, received lots of skepticism when the company launched the service at the beginning of this year,” the spokesperson said. “However, the company has proved its model to be the wave of the future with reports of growth in sales every month as well as new users every month with a very low retention rate.”
The company claims the platform now hosts content in hundreds of genres from more than 70 production companies.
Brazilian author Paolo Coelho, whose novel The Alchemist has sold more than 165 million copies, offered Sony $100,000 for rights to The Interview, saying he wants to webcast the movie for free on his website.
At press time, Sony had not responded to any offers.
