Sony Pictures is having a much worse month than you are. The studio, which is the only Hollywood major owned by a tech company remember, was the victim of a massive hacking attack, which really began the week of Thanksgiving.
This is easily the worse hacking of a Hollywood studio in history and shows just how unbelievable vulnerable the studio is. Their business tactics are now all over the web and even personal correspondents between employees are now public. We even know how much executives from the company are paid.
Five major movies were also leaked, including Sony’s big holiday movie, its Annie remake. While that initially sounded like something that happens quite frequently (it happened to Expendables 3 over the summer), it was immediately clear that this is a much bigger deal.
The top theory for the hack is that a North Korean group named Guardians of Peace wanted to get back at Sony for The Interview, the Christmas Day comedy where James Franco and Seth Rogen are hired by the CIA to kill Kim Jong Un. However, Sony told the Associated Press that it doesn't think a North Korean group was behind it and the investigation is still ongoing.
According to Time Magazine, the hack started the Monday before Thanksgiving, when Sony employees booted their computers to find a picture of a red skull. Text warned that “top secrets” would be leaked. A Reddit thread claimed that the hackers also took control of the company’s Twitter accounts, which is why a picture of CEO Michael Lynton in hell surfaced.
There is a lot of data from Sony’s computers now available for everyone in Hollywood and around the world to rummage through. According to BuzzFeed, almost 40GB of internal data was leaked, revealing data from 6,800 employees around the world.
With that in mind, let’s look at just a few of the things we’ve learned about Sony.
image of James Franco courtesy of INFphoto.com
[new page = Gender wage gap]
Fusion.net revealed that a spreadsheet listing salaries was part of the hack. It shows that 17 U.S. employees earn $1 million or more a year. However, only one is a woman. That’s Amy Pascal, Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair and chairman of the Motion Picture Group.
She earns $3 million a year, the same as Lynton.
In addition, Fusion reports that Columbia Pictures co-presidents Michael De Luca and Hannah Minghella have very different salaries, even though they essentially have the same job. De Luca is on track to earn $2.4 million in 2014, while Minghella is on track for $1.6 million.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Pascal and Lynton have confirmed that the salaries are true.
[new page = Seinfeld makes a crap load of money]
Seinfeld has been off the air for 16 years, but still runs in syndication and makes a crap load of money for Sony. According to Buzzfeed, Sony has Tribune Broadcasting paying $5.85 million over three years. A document on TV deals also showed how much the show makes in smaller deals, including the $702,000 Sony makes from a single CBS-owned station in Seattle.
The revelation of these deals is dangerous for Sony because it shows just how much it is still banking on decades-old TV models that are far too outdated at this point. People don’t need to wait around for episodes of Breaking Bad to show up in syndication. They can just watch it on Netflix whenever they want.
[new page = Even Sony people don’t like the movies they make]
It’s not secret that Sony hasn’t had a monster hit movie in a while. Sure, there was the James Bond movie Skyfall, but that was awhile ago and not a 100 percent Sony production (it was made with MGM). Still, the studio continues to bank on Spider-Man and Adam Sandler, despite it being years since Sandler’s last big live action movie. And, as 2012 comments from employees show, people working for the studio know this.
Gawker posted comments from a spreadsheet filled with comments from employees, who are left wondering why the studio likes working with Sandler so much.
“In TV and Theatrical, I hope management looks closely at the money spent on development and term deals to ensure efficiency,” one employee wrote. “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?”
[new page = Sony tries to appeal to lowest common denominator]
Another thing revealed from the hack that everyone already knows - studios like to appeal to the widest possible audience. But Sony goes way too far out of its way to do so. Another post on Gawker showed terrible Powerpoint slides that revealed Sony’s marketing tactics.
It reveals some of the pathetic mistakes the studio made with duds like Grown Ups 2 and After Earth. For After Earth, they didn’t even think of it as a movie, but an “ecosystem of content and brand initiatives to begin launching in Spring 2012.” Wasn’t it supposed to be a movie?
The studio also found that teens “were the most likely to classify the Smurfs as ‘cool.’” Also, “ADHESIVES” are an important part of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for some reason.
They also try to avoid politics, even if it is part of the movie’s plot. A Captain Phillips slide tells employees to “avoid American themes.” For White House Down, they have to “avoid American-centrism.”
[new page = Seth Rogen is worth more than James Franco]
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that extensive documents on The Interview were also revealed, since the hackers got to Deloitte Touche, a financial consulting firm used by the studio. Those documents revealed that Seth Rogen was paid $8.4 million, while the Oscar-nominated Franco received $6.5 million. In total, the film cost $44 million to make.
The movie better be a hit or Sony is going to be left wondering if that was $44 million well spent.
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