With all the back and forth at Sony after the whole hack went down, no one was sure if The Interview would ever see the light of day.
Thankfully, Sony didn’t cave to the hackers and eventually released the controversial comedy.
[ Related: How MUCH Did The Interview Make From Online Downloads?! ]
Sure, most major theaters pulled out, but several independent chains still showed the film. The problem was Sony also released the film digitally, as a streaming download online.
That upset one man in Ohio, who tried to ride all the publicity right into some cold, hard cash.
He bought $650 of tickets to The Interview (at $13 a pop) and planned to resell them (read: illegally scalp) online for a higher price.
The man in question, Jason Best, said:
“I saw all the hype about ‘The Interview’ on the 23rd and thought, ‘Hey, folks are selling these tickets in other cities and it seems like that’s the thing to do right now so why not give it a shot so see how it goes.'”
It went how most get rich quick schemes go… it blew up in his face.
The film released digitally for half the price on sites like YouTube, Hulu and Netflix. People who weren’t close to a movie theater just watched online.
No one bought his tickets and now he wants a refund from the Esquire Theatre.
The problem is he bought the tickets though movietickets.com which specifically warns purchasers that owners reserve the right to not offer refunds for special events.
This showing of The Interview counts as a special event, so no refunds.
On top of everything, scalping tickets is illegal so we’re pretty sure this guy’s case is dead in the water.
Maybe next time, don’t do anything illegal and you won’t lose half a grand.
