BRASILIA: Brazilian author Paulo Coelho offered Thursday to pay Sony $100,000 for rights to The Interview, protesting the company's decision to scrap the North Korean parody film amid chilling threats from hackers.

Sony Pictures cancelled the December 25 release of the film after after major theatre chains in the United States and Canada said they would not screen the madcap comedy in which two television journalists are recruited to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Skittishness about attending the movie followed threats by a hacking group calling itself GOP (Guardians of Peace), which invoked the September 11, 2001 attacks in an ominous warning to any moviegoers planning to see the film.

Sony's decision sparked protests from free speech advocates and foreign policy hawks.

Coelho wrote on his Twitter account:

He later added:

The author of The Alchemist told Brazil newspaper O Globo the cancelled release “set a terrible precedent."

“It's a threat that works. It's like the terrorists win,” he said, likening the move to when British-Indian author Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses was burned and banned in Muslim countries, but said “this is even more serious."

In addition to the threat against cinema-goers, Sony was hacked and a trove of embarrassing emails, scripts and other internal communications – including information about employee salaries and health records – was leaked.

North Korea has denied involvement in the brazen November 24 cyber attack against Sony, which experts say could have been carried out by disgruntled Sony workers or by supporters of a foreign power.