BELFAST — The whole world has been watching the surreal drama unfold these past weeks around the cyberhacking of SONY Entertainment Network over the Seth Rogan-James Franco satire The Interview and the fallout has been felt locally.

Mike Hurley, co-owner of Colonial Theatre in Belfast, decided last week to pull the movie in advance of SONY’s announcement that the company was scuttling the release of the movie nationwide.

He sent a letter to SONY last week expressing a multitude of reasons for canceling a showing of the movie, including his apprehension over the hackers' technological capabilities and their threats to distributors and exhibitors.

In his letter to SONY he wrote: “I have no idea what they might do to individual exhibitors, but based on their capabilities to date, I do not believe that writing some simple code for an attack/denial of service, or other attacks on our office computers, websites, and even our digital servers and projectors, does not seem to be a very challenging or unlikely scenario. In fact, it could be a very simple piece of code to attack theatres' Internet services that are showing The Interview.”

I spoke to him by phone to gauge his reasons, the public reaction and "the whole new ball game" of cyber-vandalism.

Q: People in the community have apparently complained about your decision to pull the movie. What do you want to say to that?

A: It is true, that without a doubt, I pulled it and a bunch of other theatres and distributors pulled it before SONY announced they were going to halt its distribution. All of the hot air that is surrounding this thing is like crack cocaine for people. Everybody has an opinion. I’ve had people really give me a hard time saying, ‘Oh you caved.' Yet, they’ve got nothing at stake. Nothing. When these hackers went after SONY, they didn't just take everything; they fried their servers afterward, leaving them with nothing. So, these people complaining to me, it's not their computer servers on the line.

Q: What's the worst that hackers could do to the little theatres?

A: I appreciate that people want to watch me burst into flames for their amusement, but I'm not doing it. For example, you work for Penobscot Bay Pilot. Imagine if someone had completely hacked your site and erased it and told you ‘We'll give you back your site if you drop this story.’ You guys would be seriously considering what you'd do next. And honestly, I really don't believe a physical attack could happen, but one of my mottos in life is never underestimate a sicko. So, you'd think, oh North Korea, they would never hold someone's son in America and tell them if you don’t attack a theatre, we'll kill your son. They would never do that, would they? We have no idea who is behind this or what else they are capable of. These people are like super high tech Ninja cyberwarriors. No army has stopped them so far. No amount of NSA surveillance has been able to identify them. It would be like child's play for these guys to write some code ‘Search for theatres playing The Interview.’ So, there you go.

Q: What is your opinion about the precedent set over the SONY example for artists of future satirical works?

A: Well as Jon Stewart said, ‘I made this movie, Rosewater, attacking Iran and no one cared.’ You have to take North Korea's insanity in mind here. If someone is nuts enough and has enough money, they can do a lot of damage.

Q: This is similar situation to the Muslim controversy over author Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Not only was his life threatened for years, but in 1989, after the book was published, the FBI was notified about almost 80 threats to bookstores, with two bookstores actually bombed in California. What is the difference this a similar situation for you?

A: I guarantee you if the same thing just happened to that publisher today and they had their entire website, email and communications wiped out, along with bomb threats, they would have rethought publishing it. They might choose to continue, but they’d think about it.

The thing is I didn't care enough about this movie. This is about cyber warfare. No police have yet to can figure this out. The feds can't figure out who did it. No one can protect you at this point. You know what? I'm going to take a pass. And for the people who are unhappy about my decision, well, it's like what someone just said to me recently. Picture a school taken hostage and the people whose kids aren’t in the school are the same ones saying ‘Don't negotiate with terrorists.’ Or here's another metaphor. Picture there's a bank robbery in progress. You know there are people inside with guns. Would you go in and try to do some banking? No, you wouldn't. That's what I'm looking at here.

Q: And you're saying the stakes might be high for some movies, but not this movie?

A: It's a piece of crud movie. I was looking at my schedule and we had an opening for this film. I enjoyed the trailer for the film; it seemed funny. But, I had mixed feelings anyway about booking it. After it opened in Russia and Europe, and 9 out of 10 reviews said it just stunk.

Q: Sounds like you're probably not the only small town theatre facing these same issues?

A: I do know of theaters all over the U.S. that were adamantly committed to playing it, and others that planned not to play it until it became an issue and then wanted to play it. What can I say? Some people are drawn to a fight. I get that. I've had people question my patriotism, my bravery and have said, ‘How can you sleep at night?’ My answer is: Like a baby. Then I wake up in five minutes and cry.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com