Last year’s hacker attack on Sony led to a seemingly unending cascade of embarrassment for the multinational film studio when hacked emails were released, uncovering all manner of buried secrets, ranging from a studio exec referring to Angelina Jolie as a “minimal talented spoiled brat”; to studio head Amy Pascal forced to resign her job over numerous off-colour, offensive emails.
If you think the whole thing would make a great documentary, you’re not the first: filmmakers (and spouses) Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer are already working on a film about the devastating cyberattack, reports The Hollywood Reporter in an exclusive.
The doc — still to be titled, promises to be a doozy, with THR claiming the film “is expected to drop new bombshells.”;
In fact, sources tell THR that the filmmakers will posit some alternative theories as to the culprit behind the hack (North Korea is widely believed to be responsible, and no less an authority that President Barack Obama publicly blamed the rogue nation for the hack).
“But many in the cybersecurity community believe that the attack likely was an inside job given that the hackers exhibited intimate knowledge of the architecture of Sony’s servers,”; notes THR. “Others are skeptical about how an isolated regime could pull off such a sophisticated media campaign (outlets like THR that received direct missives from the hackers appeared to have been carefully targeted). And North Korea has denied culpability. To date, the only group officially to take credit for the attack is the so-called Guardians of Peace, whose identity remains shrouded in mystery.”;
Amer and Noujaim, whose Netflix doc The Square won three Emmys, were already working on a film about international cyberattacks when the Sony hack took place and immediately captured their attention.
“The Sony story is an important chapter in this larger issue,” Amer tells THR. “The analysts and experts we speak to see it as the 9/11 of cyberattacks, and the implications will be felt for years to come.”;
