LOS ANGELES — Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton told CNN on Friday that the studio did not "cave" under pressure from hackers to pull The Interview from theaters, disputing President Obama's version of events and placing blame for the decision squarely on the nation's movie theater chains.

Lynton added that Sony "would still like the public to see" The Interview. He spoke on the heels of a press conference during which Obama said Sony had "made a mistake" by pulling the film in light of a threat aimed at theaters.

SEE ALSO: A complete recap of 'The Interview,' the movie Sony may never show you

Obama said during the press conference that he wished he had been consulted on Sony's decision; Lynton challenged Obama's implication to CNN's Fareed Zakaria during his interview. "My response is that a few days ago, I did personally reach out to senior people at the White House, and informed them that we needed help," he said.

Clips from the interview with Zakaria ran Friday afternoon on CNN, and it will air in its entirety on at 8 p.m. ET on Friday on Anderson Cooper 360.

Shortly after Lynton's comments aired, Sony issued the following statement:

Sony Pictures Entertainment is and always has been strongly committed to the First Amendment. For more than three weeks, despite brutal intrusions into our company and our employees’ personal lives, we maintained our focus on one goal: getting the film The Interview released. Free expression should never be suppressed by threats and extortion. The decision not to move forward with the December 25 theatrical release of The Interview was made as a result of the majority of the nation’s theater owners choosing not to screen the film. This was their decision. Let us be clear — the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it. Without theaters, we could not release it in the theaters on Christmas Day. We had no choice. After that decision, we immediately began actively surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform. It is still our hope that anyone who wants to see this movie will get the opportunity to do so.

Prior to Sony pulling the film, Lynton defended the studio's decision last week to let movie theater chains make up their minds about whether to screen the film on Christmas Day.

“In this instance, the president, the press and the public are mistaken on what actually happened,” Lynton told Zakaria. “We do not own movie theaters, we cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters.”

Lynton said the movie theater chains came to Sony, one by one, and told the studio that they would not run The Interview. He did not clarify whether that correspondence came before or after the studio announced last week that it was leaving the decision in theaters' hands.

"We have not caved. We have not given in. We have persevered and we have not backed down. We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie," Lynton added.

But if Sony first approached exhibitors, telling them it was OK not to show the film, it was more than just permission — it was an open invitation. The studio/exhibitor relationship is deeply symbiotic, and theaters would have been under enormous pressure to screen The Interview if Sony held firm. If Sony wanted a way to pass the buck, telling theater chains they were free to back out all but guaranteed an easy scapegoat.

And the cries for a VOD release have also been in vain: Lynton suggested to CNN that Sony was having similar trouble finding a digital distribution partner.

"There are a number of options available to us, and we are exploring those. [...] There has not been one major VOD, video on demand distributor, one major ecommerce site that has stepped forward to say they are willing to distribute this movie for us. Again, we don't have that direct intermediary with the American public, so we need to go through an intermediary to do that."

The U.S. government on Friday officially linked to North Korea to the hacking, though the North Koreans were quick to deny it.