Thousands of people watched illegal copies of The Interview in Asia (Mostly China and South Korea) on Friday, just hours after the controversial movie on the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was released in the United States.
Many among the viewers said they watched the controversial movie because of the devastating cyberattack on the Hollywood studio that produced it, Sony Pictures, but they were not impressed.
"A lot of it is unrealistic and the people who play North Koreans are so bad at speaking Korean," said a viewer on Naver, an online portal. "In the scene where Kim Jong Un gets mad...I couldn't quite understand what he was saying."
A blogger on Naver said:
"There is no drama and not much fun. It's all about forced comedy that turns you off. Couldn't they have done a better job making this movie?"
The United States has blamed the cyberattack on North Korea, but Pyongyang has said it is not responsible.
In China, a copy of the movie with Chinese subtitles has been viewed at least 300,000 times on just one video sharing platform.
A user on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo.
"It doesn't matter whether the film is any good, it's become something everyone has to see,"
The film, which had initially been cancelled after the cyberattack on Sony, opened in more than 300 movie theatres across the United States on Christmas Day, drawing many sell-out audiences and statements by patrons that they were championing freedom of expression.
The film was available to US online viewers through Google Inc's Google Play and YouTube Movies, Microsoft Corp's Xbox Live as well as on a Sony website, www.seetheinterview.com. It can be seen in Canada on the Sony site and Google Canada's website.
There is no date for the official release in Asia and Africa as the movie can only be watched in United States Theaters and rented with a US Credit card and can be watched with a US Ip address online.
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