4 Dec – After the recent revelation of the 17 Sony execs' salaries along with the leak of five of Sony Picture's movies, the latest victims of the hack attack are "The Interview" actors, Seth Rogen and James Franco. According to report from Bloomberg, Seth Rogen who is the actor and director of "The Interview" was paid USD8.4 million including compensation, while his co-star, James Franco was reportedly paid USD6.5 million for the film. Britney Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline who has a cameo appearance in the movie, received USD5,000 for the USD44 million film. Furthermore, the leak also revealed a compilation of negative feedback by Sony's staff regarding the studio's partnership with Adam Sandler's movies, here are some of them listed by Gawker:-
"In TV and Theatrical, I hope management looks closely at the money spent on development and term deals to ensure efficiency. There are a lot of term deal personnel as well as creative personnel, yet we only release a dozen or so Columbia Pictures a year, for example. And will we still be paying for Adam Sandler? Why?" "It is commendable that SPE understands/supports the importance of risk-taking, particularly in how the we pick films to greenlight. However, the studio needs to change deal structure that has been in place with Happy Madison, as this arrangement has disproportionately benefitted Adam Sandler and his team, relative to SPE." "There is a general "blah-ness" to the films we produce. Althought we manage to produce an innovative film once in awhile, Social Network, Moneyball, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we continue to be saddled with the mundane, formulaic Adam Sandler films. Let's raise the bar a little on the films we produce, and inspire employees that they are working on the next Social Network."
Due to this entire ruckus, Sony Pictures is looking to officially name North Korea as the source of the cyber hacking attack that have exposed a large amount of sensitive insider information and files which has brought down its corporate network, Recode reports. Variety reports that according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio, as of 30 November 2014 "Fury" has been downloaded illegally for more than 1.2 million times, "Annie" 206,000, "Still Alice" 103,832, "Mr. Turner" 63,379 and "To Write Love on Her Arms" 19,946 times. Several media sites have reported that North Korea is being investigated for the hack, as the government of the country had previously expressed dissatisfaction over the upcoming Sony Pictures film, "The Interview" which involves the assassination of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.