TV & Not TV, back on TV! I returned to CNBC’s Squawk Alley this morning to discuss my latest Quartz story on The Interview’s big first four days online. Here’s a clip from the segment:
It was a pleasure as always chatting with Carl Quintanilla and the team.
Sony has released the VOD numbers for The Interview — and they are impressive. The movie earned more than $15 million during its first four days on the internet, and was rented or purchased more than 2 million times. Yet despite this seemingly terrific news, the long-term Interview forecast is still bleak for Sony, as I explained at Quartz:
By making those day-and-date internet video deals, Sony has also lost out on the additional VOD revenue that would have come 90 days or so after the film’s theatrical release—which means that its chances of making back The Interview’s estimated $75 million budget are exceedingly slim. The film’s online success might be a qualified moral victory for Sony, but it definitely won’t be a financial one—and that’s even before calculating the significant financial fallout from the hacking scandal, which could be as much as $100 million.
I also detail the other big Interview winners and losers from the past week, including Google, Apple and Netflix.
‘The Interview’ was a huge online success — but more for Google than for Sony