George Clooney slams press, Hollywood over Sony hacking fallout

George Clooney is calling out the media and Hollywood for not standing by Sony Pictures in the wake of the cyberattack on the studio.

In an interview with trade website Deadline, the actor reveals he circulated a petition asking industry power players to support Sony in not submitting to the hackers' demands -- and not a single person would sign it.

"Nobody wanted to be the first to sign on," Clooney said. "Now, this isn't finger-pointing on that. This is just where we are right now, how scared this industry has been made."

On Wednesday, Sony canceled the Dec. 25 theatrical release of "The Interview," -- a comedy starring James Franco and Seth Rogen as a TV host and producer recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un -- after numerous theater chains in North America dropped the film in the wake of hackers' threatened terrorist attacks.

A number of stars, including Rob Lowe, Judd Apatow and Steve Carell, have voiced their dismay over Sony pulling the movie, and Clooney agrees that the film should still be released in some way.

"Stick it online. Do whatever you can to get this movie out," he told Deadline. "Not because everybody has to see the movie, but because I'm not going to be told we can't see the movie. That's the most important part. We cannot be told we can't see something by Kim Jong-un, of all [expletive] people."

Clooney also expressed frustration with the media, saying, "a good portion of the press abdicated its real duty" in reporting the hack.

"With just a little bit of work, you could have found out that it wasn't just probably North Korea; it was North Korea," he said, adding, "Here, we're talking about an actual country deciding what content we're going to have. This affects not just movies, this affects every part of business that we have."

That includes making it more difficult for movies with controversial themes to get made.

"The truth is, you're going to have a much harder time finding distribution now," Clooney said. "And that's a chilling effect."