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George Clooney Reveals He Tried & Failed to Rally Support for Sony from Hollywood Execs

George Clooney Reveals He Tried & Failed to Rally Support for Sony from Hollywood Execs

George Clooney is opening up in a tell all interview about his efforts to get Hollywood to support Sony amid the cyber attack from North Korea and how not one person would join in on his efforts.

The 53-year-old actor and his agent Bryan Lourd tried to get Hollywood execs to sign a petition that said “we fully support Sony’s decision not to submit to these hackers’ demands. We know that to give in to these criminals now will open the door for any group that would threaten freedom of expression, privacy and personal liberty. We hope these hackers are brought to justice but until they are, we will not stand in fear. We will stand together.”

When he brought the petition to people in the business, not one person would put their support behind it.

“It was a fairly large number. Having put together telethons where you have to get all the networks on board to do the telethon at the same time, the truth is once you get one or two, then everybody gets on board,” George said. “It is a natural progression. So here, you get the first couple of people to sign it and … well, nobody wanted to be the first to sign on. Now, this isn’t finger-pointing on that. This is just where we are right now, how scared this industry has been made. Quite honestly, this would happen in any industry. I don’t know what the answer is, but what happened here is part of a much larger deal. A huge deal. And people are still talking about dumb emails. Understand what is going on right now, because the world just changed on your watch, and you weren’t even paying attention.”

While George calls The Interview a “dumb comedy” in the piece, he says it is extremely important that the film gets released and he’s going to do what it takes to make sure people see it.

“I just talked to Amy [Pascal] an hour ago. She wants to put that movie out. What do I do? My partner Grant Heslov and I had the conversation with her this morning. Bryan and I had the conversation with her last night,” George said. “Stick it online. Do whatever you can to get this movie out. Not because everybody has to see the movie, but because I’m not going to be told we can’t see the movie. That’s the most important part. We cannot be told we can’t see something by Kim Jong-un, of all f*cking people.”

Read the full interview right now on Deadline.com!

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Photos: Getty
Posted to: George Clooney, Sony Hack