SONY’S provocative North Korea parody “The Interview” has earned more than US$31 million from online, cable and telecoms sales since its December release, Sony Pictures Entertainment said Tuesday.

    The raunchy comedy film was rented or purchased more than 4.3 million times between Dec. 24 and Jan. 4 on online and video-on-demand platforms.

    To date, the film has earned US$5 million at the theatrical box office, with 580 independent theaters showing the movie in North America.

    Sony’s network was crippled by hackers as the company prepared to release “The Interview.” The attack was followed by online leaks of unreleased movies and emails that caused embarrassment to executives.

    Kazuo Hirai, Sony Corp chief executive, said Tuesday that he does not expect the November cyber attack on the company’s film studio to have a significant financial impact, two weeks after the studio rolled out the movie at the heart of the attack.

    On Monday, Hirai praised employees and partners of the Hollywood movie studio for standing up to “extortionist efforts” of hackers, his first public comments on the attack launched Nov. 21. (SD-Agencies)