Last night, Sony announced that the controversial film <em>The Interview</em> had generated $15M in online revenue. The movie was downloaded or rented more than 2 million times.
9/11 style threats lead Sony to pull the movie from theaters but they later decided to release it in certain online venues on Christmas Eve. The movie can be purchased or rented from Youtube, Google Play, Xbox, and Sony’s site seetheinterview.com.
Apple has also jumped on to the bandwagon, making the movie available on itunes.
The price to buy the movie is $14.99 and $5.99 to rent.
Most of the movie’s business came from Google Play and YouTube. The movie was pirated, however, more than 1.5M times in the first two days, according to torrent freak.
Several independent movie theaters showed <em>The Interview</em>, generating about $3M in revenue.
To put it in perspective, the film cost $100M to make, so it isn’t exactly a box office success.
Sony’s full announcement:
Sony Pictures Entertainment today announced the total number of online rentals and purchases for The Interview through the first four days of the holiday weekend.
Through Saturday, December 27, including all of its online distribution platforms, The Interview has been rented or purchased online more than 2 million times. Total consumer spending through Saturday for The Interview online is over $15 million.
In addition to the strong turnout for its limited theatrical release over the holiday weekend, after only four days, The Interview already ranks as Sony Pictures #1 online film of all time.
The Interview was made available online across the United States at 10AM PST on Christmas Eve to rent in HD on Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Video and the dedicated website www.seetheinterview.com at a price of $5.99. The film was also available for purchase in HD for $14.99. Online distribution was expanded to Canada through Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Video starting later that afternoon.
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