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Seth Rogen's 'The Interview' will be cut to please North Korea

Sony reportedly plans to alter or cut a scene featuring Kim Jong Un's face melting in slow motion.

By Veronica Linares
James Franco y Seth Rogen. UPI/Phil McCarten
James Franco y Seth Rogen. UPI/Phil McCarten | License Photo

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Sony Pictures is planning to amend Seth Rogen's upcoming flick The Interview following months of complaints by the North Korean government over the movie's plot to assassinate the nation's Supreme Leader.

The film stars Rogen and James Franco as a television producer and a talk show host who are asked by a CIA agent to assassinate Kim Jong Un after their network manages to get an interview with him.

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Sources tell the Hollywood Reporter that the Japan-based company plans to digitally alter the buttons worn by multiple characters in the film "because they depict the actual hardware worn by the North Korean military to honor" Kim, 31, and his late father, Kim Jong Il.

Insiders added that a scene featuring Kim's face melting in slow motion will also be altered or removed from the film.

While the country had no comments about the movie's plot when it was first unveiled in March 2013, the film's trailer irked North Korea in June, perhaps because of the use of the military hardware.

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"A film about the assassination of a foreign leader mirrors what the US has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. And let us not forget who killed Kennedy -- Americans," read statement released by North Korea's executive director of the Center for North Korea-US Peace, Kim Myong-chol.

The Interview, was co-written and co-directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The film, which was originally set for an October release, will hit theaters on Christmas Day.

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