Email conversations at Sony Pictures Entertainment may be repopulating with imprudent fodder, CEO Michael Lynton said Wednesday.
After a hack last year accessed internal emails and exposed them across the web, employees were “a bit more moderate in the way that they are expressing themselves,” he said while speaking at the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York. “A lot of things… should be kept in a phone conversation.”
“I’m sure people are saying things probably they shouldn’t,” he added. “It is the entertainment industry.”
The breach, triggered by hackers’ ire at satire lampooning North Korea in the film “The Interview,” damaged computers and leaked financial documents, but the most fervent interest centered on email exchanges peppered with embarrassing jokes, statements and off-hand comments never meant for the public eye. The hack spurred Sony to release the R-rated Seth Rogen comedy through online services, a unique test of releasing a film “day-and-date” online, as well as in theaters.
“The Interview” release was exceptional, Lynton said. Ideally, studios would proceed with day-and-date “in a much more organized way,” he said, but Sony learned that “you can get to a very big number in a very short span of time even with those factors in place.”