Sony Hack: Surprising Details on SPIDER-MAN, MIB 3, and Slams on Adam Sandler

To say Sony Pictures got hacked badly would undersell just how bad. 100TB of data was taken, and more and more of that data is continually finding its way onto the Internet. Leaked so far are sensitive internal emails, full digital copies of movies, deal memos, employee criminal background checks, employee social security numbers, employee salaries, employee medical data, unused scripts, and details of why individual staffers got laid off. And that's just from less than 1TB of data.

Pretty much anyone who has worked for or with Sony Pictures is going to have all their information spread all over the web. Also, because there is still so much yet to be poured over, we are going to be seeing stuff from this hack for years.

The team at Gawker found a text file called "Sony_2012_Comments" which is full of anonymous comments from Sony staffers presumably from 2012. Gawker's biggest digestion from all the comments "Above all: people who work at Sony are fucking tired of bad Adam Sandler movies." Hear-hear, I say. I love Sandler's old stuff but the newer stuff is terrible, with maybe special exemption for the movies that include Drew Barrymore. I'm a sucker for those.

Here are a few great slams against Sandler's recent films:

There is a general "blah-ness" to the films we produce. Although we manage to produce an innovative film once in awhile, Social Network, Moneyball, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we continue to be saddled with the mundane, formulaic Adam Sandler films. Let's raise the bar a little on the films we produce, and inspire employees that they are working on the next Social Network. That said, there's a strange dichotomy of encouraging us to be fiscally responsible, but then upper management allows certain talent and filmmakers to bleed us dry with their outlandish requests for private jets, wardrobe and grooming stylists- and are surprised when they are asked to work more than 5 hours to promote their film.

In TV and Theatrical, I hope management looks closely at the money spent on development and term deals to ensure efficiency. There are a lot of term deal personnel as well as creative personnel, yet we only release a dozen or so Columbia Pictures a year, for example. And will we still be paying for Adam Sandler? Why?

It is commendable that SPE understands/supports the importance of risk-taking, particularly in how the we [sic] pick films to greenlight. However, the studio needs to change deal structure that has been in place with Happy Madison, as this arrangement has disproportionately benefitted Adam Sandler and his team, relative to SPE.

Here's some surprising info on Men In Black 3 and Spider-Man:

Are you aware that Men In Black 3 may gross $600M at the box office, and yet will lose money for SPE? Shouldn't we question that strategy? Why are some studios making Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Twilight - and we are considering movies like Moneyball, Steve Jobs story, Captain Phillips Story, Evel Knievel story, etc. Are you aware that SPE only has 1 franchise - Spiderman. Yet, it took 5 years to generate a sequel? Spidey 3 was released in summer 2007, #4 in 2012. Don't harry potters come out over 2-3 years? Are you aware that SPE has only 1 franchise - Spidey? Yet we waited 5 years after Spidey 3 (2007) to release #4? Have you read the SEC annual report? Disney will make $300M on Spidey merchandise this year alone. We won't!

It's good to know people at Sony are thinking what we are thinking about their movies. I just wonder if it has leadership capable of making it a competing studio. Who knows if Sony has even been able to stop the hacking that continues to embarrass them? Good luck, Sony Pictures. You're going to need it.