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Photo: Sony
World News

Movie cancellation 'a very dangerous road', says Catholic director

The comments by John Deery, who's Catholic and produced movies on the Church, come as Sony was due to release a new film called the The Interview, which mocks North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un.

The comedy features James Franco and Seth Rogen, who play reporters granted an audience with Kim Jong-un. They are then asked by the American government to assassinate him.

But unknown hackers, who call themselves the Guardians of Peace, launched a cyber attack on Sony's computers in protest of the film.

They said: "Remember the 11th of September 2001.

"We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time.

"Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment."

This caused Sony to permanently cancel the release of the The Interview.

Before this specific threat, the Guardians of Peace stole data from Sony of significant financial value, before leaking it to the public.

This included a draft script of the new James Bond film Spectre, and five films distributed by Sony.

One of them was a new remake of the classic film Annie starring Cameron Diaz, and Fury, a World War II starring Brad Pitt.

Annie was unreleased before this point, and Fury had been shown in cinemas but was yet to be released on DVD.

John Deery told Premier's News Hour: "I think it's the wrong decision. You have to be able to as an artist, in whatever sense... put out what you want.

"Somebody threatens you and there's censorship and it limits the artist's freedom of expression or speech then I think you're on a very dangerous road.

"If you think about it, there are approximately 40,000 screens in the United States. Now of course, all screens can't be policed.

"Nobody wants their emails to be hacked... or the business dealings of any company, let alone a film company, so people don't want that and that's absolutely understandable.

"If, God forbid, something happened in one of the cinemas in the United States as had happened in the past then there would be public outcry, so they between a rock and a hard place in many ways."

John Deery, writer/director:

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