President Obama explained he believed Sony “made a mistake” by deciding not to release their movie The Interview after hackers threatened them.
“I wish they had spoken to me first,” he said, when asked his opinion on the matter. “I would have told them, ‘Do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kind of criminal attacks.’”
Obama confirmed that the FBI had concluded the attacks originated from North Korea.
He warned that it was a dangerous precedent for a dictator to impose “censorship” on the United States. “Imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like or news reports that they don’t like,” he said.
Obama also needled North Korea for overreacting to a comedy film. “It says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James Flacco,” he said, botching the last name of actor James Franco.
When asked if he would screen the movie at the White House, Obama declined to say. “I never release my full movie list,” he said.