on  march  it was reported that vladimir putins character has been cut from the film before an actor was cast for the role according to the hollywood reporter europacorps president luc besson wanted to shift the story’s focus to the rescue mission rather than the politics behind the disaster one theory noted by the hollywood reporter is that nobody at europacorp wanted to be hacked like happened to the film the interview that angered kim jong-un and is believed to have sparked the sony hack in  putin was just three months into the job as russian president when the tragedy occurred in  he was supposed to appear as a supporting character in the film in at least five scenes and was sympathetically portrayed in the original kursk script which highlighted why he took the tragedy personally putin’s father was a submariner before the war