Former Sony Exec Says Obama Called Him After the Big Hack to Trash ‘The Interview’

Since becoming president, Obama has remained relatively distant from current events and politics. Aside from a few rare, emergency exceptions where he felt it necessary to get back on the case — like the threat of an NBA players’ strike or Bernie Sanders’s threat to win the Democratic primary — he mostly stayed quiet and let our current elected officials do the cooking. She’s got a pretty full plate between getting that scary presidential library built, meticulously hand-crafting those year-end favorites lists we all love, and spilling the ET tea on the podcast. And of course, he also runs a production company with Michelle, producing blockbusters like the AARP Movies for Grownups Award nominee Leave the World Behind (2023).

Before he went full-on Hollywood Barack, he was simply President Barack who quietly desired to be involved in Tinseltown wheeling and dealing. However, the signs of his future media mogul aspirations were always there. One such example is reportedly in the pages of a forthcoming memoir by former Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Linton (and co-author Joshua L. Steiner). In From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past, So It Doesn’t Own YouLinton recalls an unexpected conversation with the then-President that took place right after the infamous mid-aughts hack by an alleged North Korean operative that affected Sony and threatened to shut down the entire studio.

Let’s properly set the scene for Linton’s tale.

INT. Sony Pictures CEO’s Office – July 2015 – Night

Michael Linton, 55, sits at his desk and is still cleaning up the mess left by the hacker group “Guardians of Peace” eight months later. After breaking into Sony’s network and thawing 70 percent of the studio’s servers, they walked away with troves of sensitive data, including unfinished scripts for unannounced films and 47,000 social security numbers. To make matters worse, those emails were responsible for being later leaked, resulting in Amy Pascal’s departure and her strained relationships with the talent. And it’s all based on some silly Seth Rogen comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong Il.

michael
I can’t do it even with these hackers. They moved my studio from Gucci to Ratchet.

Suddenly, Michael’s phone lights up and announces an unknown caller.

As Linton’s book tells, he and the rest of the world had just learned that North Korea was the likely culprit behind the hack and that the production of “The Interview” was a motivating factor, when the President decided to immediately warn them.

Obama scolded, “What were you thinking when you made the assassination of the leader of a hostile foreign nation a matter of conspiracy? Of course, that was a mistake.”

Staying true to the title of his book, Linton doesn’t regret greenlighting the film in this way, which inadvertently adds some fun references to Rogen’s current series, studioWhere he plays a bumbling, overconfident studio executive.

Linton said, “I wanted to join the badass gang making subversive movies. For a moment, I wanted to be on an equal footing with the actors.” “The party got out of hand, and the company, its employees, my family and I all paid a heavy price.”

Serious words, but that past seems to be really owned. And who among us doesn’t have some past mistakes that need to be corrected? Whether you underperformed in a relationship or bailed out the banks responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis, it’s never too late to blame someone. If you or someone else in your life could use a little guidance, Linton’s book hits bookstore shelves on February 24.