Michael Lynton

But that hasn't been the case now for a long time, and even less so since I started doing this.

At the time, the North Koreans were less sort of in the news and less understood than they are today.

At the time, they were sort of a bunch of people in funny hats that we didn't really see as a threat.

Now we see them very differently.

No.

Well, it's interesting you ask.

So in the summer before we released the movie and after the first...

communication or their sort of effort to say that they were unhappy with the movie, I did reach out to somebody at the State Department and the Rand Corporation to try and understand the capabilities of the North Koreans.

And in both cases, they told me not to worry that they were more bark than bite.

I think they were basing most of their analysis on Kim Jong-il, who had died a few years before.

So nobody was really familiar with his son, Kim Jong-un, who it turns out is a lot more aggressive.

But even knowing that, they didn't describe the cyber capabilities in North Korea, which it turns out are considerable.

They still were very, the FBI in particular, who was terrific throughout the process,

were were adamant that they didn't have physical capabilities here in the united states so i wasn't personally yes they did threaten but i was not personally worried i wasn't worried for the employees of sony i was not worried for the physical safety of the actors