Peter A Clarke

The hacking attack on Sony continues to wreak damage on both the brand but also its relationship with those with whom it does business, especially its stars. The immediate impact of the breach was the loss of intellectual property, films which were stolen and downloaded.  This cost Sony revenue.  The latest source of excruciating embarrassment is the leak of emails from Sony executives to producers about actors as reported in Sony hack: Angelina Jolie called a spoiled brat in leaked emails, and Nasty Exchanges and Insults and about its mistakes in movie making as seen in Leaked e-mails show Sony botching its Steve Jobs movie.  There seems to have been a very poor privacy framework behind the firewall.  With proper privacy engineering such a broad ranging attack on differing components of Sony’s cyberspace architecture.  Obvious questions are whether data was properly segmented so that different segmentts can be handled with different privacy, encryption adn security rules, what technical measures were in place to ensure only authorised access and use of data, what security measures were in place to detect unauthorised access, was there a pervasive risk management approach applied to ensure effective privacy engineering.

The article Sony Hack provides:

 Actor Angelina Jolie has been called a “minimally talented spoiled brat” with a “rampaging” ego in a series of fiery emails between two leading industry players released by anonymous hackers.

The emails were allegedly an exchange between Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin and Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal. 

In the back and forth, the pair discussed the politics behind the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic (planned to rival Universal’s widely panned Ashton Kutcher version), on which they were working together.

Rudin, who is producing the new Jobs movie, reveals that Jolie was upset that they asked David Fincher to direct the movie, instead of her adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff’s 2010 biography Cleopatra: A Life.

“YOU BETTER SHUT ANGIE DOWN BEFORE SHE MAKES IT VERY HARD FOR DAVID TO DO JOBS,” Rudin allegedly wrote to Pascal, in an email dated February 27.

Pascal then wrote an email to another colleague assessing the situation. In it, she appeared to refer to the fact that the Cleopatra project was put on hold while Jolie directed Unbroken.

“Angie directed a movie and now she’s ready for Cleo and it’s not ready. Fincher is her silver bullet,” she wrote.

“Except he’s not.

“He’s perfect for Jobs and we don’t even know what Cleo is, only what we want it to be. That’s the same situation as Girl. A disaster.

“Let’s take a breath. Neither movie is going anywhere. Next weeks business. I will work on meeting.

“This doesn’t need to get crazy. We control the material. Jobs is awesome. Cleo can be a big commercial hit. They are ours. We don’t work for these people.”

However, in Pascal’s direct response to Rudin, she took issue with his tone and the exchange degenerated quickly.

“Do not f—ing threaten me,” she said.

Rudin replied that he was not threatening her and “reminds” her that he “brought this material to you”.

He then appeared to let loose on Jolie:

“There is no movie of Cleopatra to be made (and how that is a bad thing and rampaging spoiled ego of this woman and the cost of the movie is beyond me) and if you won’t tell her that you do not like the script – which, let me remind you, SHE DOESN’T EITHER – this will just spin even further out in Crazyland but let me tell you I have zero appetite for the indulgence of spoiled brats and I will tell her this myself if you don’t.”

Pascal replied that she had been trying to get Rudin to speak to Jolie about the movie but that he refused. She wrote that she had tried calling Jolie herself, but that Jolie was “pissed off” and was going to make things “uncomfortable” for Finch.

In the angry tirade that followed, Rudin wrote: “I’ve told you exactly how I want to do this material. It’s the ONLY way I want to do this material. I’m not remotely interested in presiding over a $180m ego bath that we both know will be the career-defining debacle for us both. 

“I’m not destroying my career over a minimally talented spoiled brat who thought nothing of shoving this off her plate for eighteen months so she could go direct a movie.

“I have no desire to be making a movie with her, or anybody, that she runs and that we don’t. She’s a camp event and a celebrity and that’s all and the last thing anybody needs is to make a giant bomb with her that any fool could see coming. 

“We will end up being the laughing stock of our industry and we will deserve it, which is so clearly where this is headed that I cannot believe we are still wasting our time with it.”

In a separate email he wrote that Jolie was creating issues simply because Cleopatra, “her fantasy toy-box isn’t ready for her to play with”.

The debacle went from bad to worse with Fincher, along with lead star Leonardo DiCaprio and his replacement Christian Bale, all ultimately pulling out of the movie. Universal Studios has now picked up the project and given Michael Fassbender the lead role.

The hacked emails are the latest in an attack on Sony Pictures by a group calling themselves Guardians of Peace, who have apparently demanded that the film studio’s upcoming North Korea-baiting comedy, The Interview, go unreleased.