The Interview now available to rent for $5.99 or purchase for $14.99 through YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video, and SeeTheInterview.com
Where To Watch ‘The Interview’ Online Right Now — Sony will release “The Interview” online Wednesday, the company announced.
Context & Ripple Effects
Sony's decision follows YouTube tentatively agreeing to host the film, and lands the same day select theaters begin Christmas-day showings — a day-and-date debut for a major studio title that had been pulled from its planned wide release. The distribution list is deliberately broad: Google's YouTube, Google Play, Microsoft's Xbox Video, plus a dedicated SeeTheInterview.com site.
What makes this a template case rather than a one-off is how quickly the numbers followed: within four days Sony reported more than 2M rentals and purchases totaling over $15M, even as trackers counted over 1.5M torrent downloads in the first two days — direct evidence of both paid demand and leakage at blockbuster scale.
First-order effects
- Consumers gain same-day access to a wide-release studio film at home for $5.99 to rent or $14.99 to own across YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video, and SeeTheInterview.com, while the small set of theaters playing it loses its exclusivity window from day one.
- YouTube, Google Play, and Xbox Video each get a marquee, search-driven title that funnels transactional revenue through their storefronts — a live test of their rental infrastructure against a high-profile demand spike.
Second-order effects
- Apple's later addition of the film to iTunes shows the platform roster expanding once demand is proven — rival storefronts cannot afford to be absent from the catalog that becomes Sony's top digital performer.
- The torrent data gives every studio a benchmark for how much paid volume coexists with piracy at scale, sharpening the internal argument over whether premium VOD pricing ($14.99) captures enough buyers to justify early digital release.
Third-order effects
- With streaming revenues eventually reaching $31M and ranking as Sony's top online film, the traditional theatrical-first windowing model faces its strongest proof point yet: a studio title can generate nine-figure-adjacent digital economics without a conventional rollout.
- If the pattern holds, day-and-date or digital-first debits shift from crisis workaround to negotiated option — giving studios leverage over exhibitors and pushing platforms like YouTube further into transactional video as a business line.
The trend: The theatrical release window is compressing as studios discover that premium on-demand platforms can serve as first-run channels when circumstances force the experiment.