Co-writer and star Seth Rogen claims that distributor Sony thought Jonah Hill’s character was “too vile” to interact with a PlayStation console in 2007’s Superbad.
Joint screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg put their own teenage experiences in what became their hit 2007 comedy, Superbad – though some of their antics appeared to have been a bit much for distributor, Sony.
While walking the red carpet for his latest comedy, the Apple TV+ series, The Studio, Rogen was asked by Rotten Tomatoes about the funniest note he’d ever received from a company executive. Rogen then revealed that, during the production of Superbad, he was told that Jonah Hill’s character, Seth, was considered so “reprehensible” that he was expressly forbidden from touching a Sony PlayStation.
In a clip uploaded to TikTok (as spotted by Variety), Rogen says: “We were told when we made the movie, Jonah Hill’s character, Seth, was so reprehensible to the studio that they were like… there’s a scene where they’re playing videogames and they were, like, ‘Jonah can’t touch a PlayStation… We can’t have him interact with our products…. It’s too vile a character.”
As his name implies, Seth was based on Rogen himself, and so the suggestion that his character was considered to be so lacking in moral fibre that he couldn’t be seen handling an electronic device left the writer somewhat taken aback.
“I was like, ‘It’s based on me,'” Rogen said. “‘That’s very insulting.'”
Nevertheless, Superbad’s production team – headed up by director Greg Mottola – accommodated Sony, and Jonah Hill wasn’t shown interacting with a PlayStation in the finished movie.
Podcast: Barbarian (2022) and Superbad (2007)
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a company making stipulations about its products. In 2020, director Rian Johnson claimed that Apple doesn’t allow iPhones to be handled by movie villains.
“Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies but – and this is very pivotal if you’re ever watching a mystery movie – bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera,” Johnson claimed in a Vanity Fair video, adding: “Every single filmmaker that has a bad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret right now.”
The pickiness over products and where they appear can cut both ways, however. According to a 2015 piece published by The Drum, Sony offered the makers of James Bond outing Spectre millions of dollars to have one of its mobile phones appear in the movie, including $5m if Daniel Craig was filmed actually holding an Xperia Z5. Craig and director Sam Mendes rebuffed the proposal, however, arguing that Bond “only uses the best.”
The Studio, due to appear on Apple TV+ from the 26th March, again sees Seth Rogen team up with Evan Goldberg. It’s about a Hollywood movie company’s struggles to remain relevant in a shifting industry. Given Rogen and Goldberg’s own experiences in Tinseltown – such as triggering a diplomatic incident with their 2014 comedy, The Interview – it’s likely to be another semi-autobiographical comedy from the pair.
There’s no word as to whether it’ll contain any PlayStations, though.
