"The Interview," the Sony Pictures movie made popular by North Korea's attempts to stop its release, earned about US$1 million in ticket sales on the first day of its theater release, U.S. media reported Friday.

The comedy involving a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un hit more than 300 independent theaters across the United States on Christmas Day Thursday after Sony reversed a much-denounced decision to cancel its release under threats from hackers.

A day earlier, it was released online on Youtube, Google Play and Xbox Video, CNN Wire and other U.S. media outlets reported on Friday that the film banked almost $1 million at the box office on its opening day, and it could make a couple million more over the long holiday weekend.

The amount does not include revenues from the online release. 

The results of Wednesday's online release are not known, but if 1 million people rented it through YouTube, that would amount to $6 million, CNN Wire said.

The satire movie, which features Seth Rogen and James Franco, tells the story of two American journalists who land an interview with the North Korean leader in Pyongyang but are then recruited by the CIA to assassinate the young dictator.

It had originally been scheduled to be released at more than 3,000 theaters. But large theaters bowed out of their plan to show it after hackers disrupted Sony's computer network and threatened attacks on theaters showing it.

The FBI has determined that North Korea was behind the hack.

North Korea has condemned the movie as the "most undisguised" sponsoring of terrorism and lauded the cyber-attack as a "righteous deed." But the communist regime has flatly denied any responsibility for the hacking attack.

Experts say Pyongyang fears the movie will ultimately make its way into the totalitarian nation that has long used a strong cult of personality around its leader to control its hunger-stricken population of 24 million. (Yonhap)