WillBrink
06-26-14, 07:15
Over what? A Seth Rogen Comedy. Oh those whacky North Koreans!
While it's hard to imagine Seth Rogen and James Franco being the proximate cause of World War III, the stars of Pineapple Express have prompted the latest round of blustery threats from North Korea.
Pyongyang has promised "merciless" retaliation if their latest comedy, The Interview is released as scheduled in October.
To be sure, the plot hits a little close to home – especially for a secretive and paranoid regime: a talk show host and his producer (Franco and Rogen, respectively) score an interview with Kim Jong Un (played by Randall Park) and are subsequently recruited by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean leader.
The country's official KCNA news service called the actors "gangster filmmakers" and said that if the U.S. government allowed the release of the movie, Pyongyang would consider it an "act of war."
A Foreign Ministry official quoted by KCNA berated the movie as "reckless U.S. provocative insanity," that had spawned "a gust of hatred and rage" among the people of North Korea.
"The act of making and screening such a movie that portrays an attack on our top leadership ... is a most wanton act of terror and act of war, and is absolutely intolerable," the official said.
"If the U.S. administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless counter-measure will be taken," the spokesman said.
The controversy has been brewing since the trailer was released earlier this month. Rogen recently acknowledged it in a tweet:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/25/325646474/north-korea-threatens-war-over-new-seth-rogen-comedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj3uHftd5FQ
While it's hard to imagine Seth Rogen and James Franco being the proximate cause of World War III, the stars of Pineapple Express have prompted the latest round of blustery threats from North Korea.
Pyongyang has promised "merciless" retaliation if their latest comedy, The Interview is released as scheduled in October.
To be sure, the plot hits a little close to home – especially for a secretive and paranoid regime: a talk show host and his producer (Franco and Rogen, respectively) score an interview with Kim Jong Un (played by Randall Park) and are subsequently recruited by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean leader.
The country's official KCNA news service called the actors "gangster filmmakers" and said that if the U.S. government allowed the release of the movie, Pyongyang would consider it an "act of war."
A Foreign Ministry official quoted by KCNA berated the movie as "reckless U.S. provocative insanity," that had spawned "a gust of hatred and rage" among the people of North Korea.
"The act of making and screening such a movie that portrays an attack on our top leadership ... is a most wanton act of terror and act of war, and is absolutely intolerable," the official said.
"If the U.S. administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless counter-measure will be taken," the spokesman said.
The controversy has been brewing since the trailer was released earlier this month. Rogen recently acknowledged it in a tweet:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/25/325646474/north-korea-threatens-war-over-new-seth-rogen-comedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj3uHftd5FQ