Well, we have finally done it, as a species we are looking at our first war started over a movie. North Korea has decided to kick its rhetoric into high gear and has threatened a war if "The Interview" is released.

North Korea previously denounced the movie, but have decided that was not enough and want to really bring the crazy. A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in state media that the movie's release would be an "act of war," and promised "merciless" retaliation.

James Franco and Seth Rogen star in the action-comedy film, about a talkshow host and producer who are invited to interview Kim Jong-un, but are then recruited by the CIA to assassinate the leader.

The film's teaser trailer,  involves a lookalike actor playing Kim Jong-un, as well as fight scenes with North Korean tanks and helicopters.

The North Korea spokesman was quoted by the state KCNA news agency as saying: "Making and releasing a movie on a plot to hurt our top-level leadership is the most blatant act of terrorism and war and will absolutely not be tolerated."

He added that the "reckless US provocative insanity" of mobilising a "gangster filmmaker" to challenge the North's leadership was triggering "a gust of hatred and rage" among North Korean people and soldiers.

"If the US administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless counter-measure will be taken," the spokesman went on to say. The concept of freedom of speech is so foreign that they haven't even considered the possibility that it is illegal for the US administration to stop the release of a movie under the first amendment. 

Of course this is just saber rattling, North Korea doest have enough money to feed its own people let alone load them on boats and head to California, but the fact that a nation state is even talking about the almost inconceivably petty idea of a war waged over a movie is a new low for all of us. 

North Korea is currently holding three Americans in custody. The latest to be detained is said to be a tourist named Jeffrey Edward Fowle who reportedly left a Bible at a hotel.

Seth Rogen, one of the directors of "The Interview," said he was inspired by journalists' trips to North Korea.

He told Yahoo: "People have the hypothetical discussion about how journalists have access to the world's most dangerous people, and they hypothetically would be in a good situation to assassinate them."

The film was originally about meeting Kim Jong-il, but they had to revise the script when he died in 2011 and his son Kim Jong-un took power.