http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/interview-lost-sony-30-million-764366The National Association of Theater Owners is hardly an impartial source, granted, but not even Sony is particularly ambitious about the movie's financial prospects:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-sonys-interview-freedom-edition-20150114-story.htmlThe studio expects to break even on film, which cost $44 million to make. That's due to strong home video sales and the fact that the studio was able to save millions on marketing the movie when the wide-release plans were scuttled, according to a person familiar with the matter.
I would say that I told you so...but I didn't tell you so. I never claimed that an online release wouldn't be successful, only that the limited theatrical release wouldn't be. Yes, I'm still irritated about that argument, particularly by the way that pizaaplanet stubbornly refused to admit he was wrong after I clearly pointed out how the context and timing of what I said would have rendered his interpretation of my post completely nonsensical. It's true that the "very, very wrong" part was phrased poorly - one might even say arrogantly - but facts are facts. You don't get to win every argument you ever have on the Internet.
With that being said, this news does in fact surprise me. Hopefully, the lack of success was due to negative word-of-mouth rather than audiences just not being interested in watching movies online. I'd hate for the industry to conclude from this that online distribution as a concept is doomed to failure and that we should just stick with movie theaters until the end of time.