Sony Pictures has announced it will not drop the release of the movie "The Interview" all together and that it had only cancelled the Christmas Day release. The company has added it is looking for a new date to release the film, a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
This comes a day after the company scrapped the movie's opening following a cyber-attack blamed on North Korea, and comes as President Barack Obama has decried the action as a "mistake".
The company said on Friday that it was "surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform".
In his rebuke of Sony Pictures' decision to cancel the release of the film on its stipulated date, Obama said that Sony "made a mistake" succumbing to a force created by external sources.
"We cannot have a society in which some director someplace can start imposing censorship in the United States," he said in a news conference, adding that Washington will respond to the cyber-attack in a "manner that we choose".
Responding to Obama's comments, Sony Pictures clarified that they had not made an error in pulling the film.
"We have not caved, we have not given in, we have preserved and we have not backed down," Sony Pictures chief executive and Chairman Michael Lynton told CNN.
A statement released by the company said that the decision to cancel the Christmas Day release was based on the fact that "the majority of the nation's theatre owners chose not to screen the film".
"Let us be clear -- the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theatres, after the theatre owners declined to show it," the statement added.
"Without theatres, we could not release it in the theatres on Christmas Day. We had no choice.
"It is still our hope that anyone who wants to see this movie will get the opportunity to do so."
North Korea Link Confirmed
Meanwhile, FBI has confirmed on Friday that North Korea was behind the cyber-attacks on Sony Pictures.
"As a result of our investigation, and in close collaboration with other U.S. Government departments and agencies, the FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions,'' an FBI statement said.
"While the need to protect sensitive sources and methods precludes us from sharing all of this information, our conclusion is based, in part, on similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks.
"We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there,'' the FBI said in the brief statement.
