Ironically, Sony's new film about a global banking conglomerate that uses its money to fund terrorism was financed by an international banking conglomerate. To the best of our knowledge, it's not committing terrorist activities with its money. Instead, it's pumping the loot into poorly-performing movies like The International.

The International is one of the movies financed by Relativity Media and Deutsche Bank's Gun Hill II slate film-financing deal. The 2006 pact co-finances and shares in the profits of films from Sony and Universal.

The film's German director, Tom Tykwer, told Reuters he was aware of the irony that his film was made with money from an international banking powerhouse, but he said "it is almost impossible to trace back to find where the money really comes from."

We'll tell you where it comes from: Deutsche Bank, Relativity, and whatever hedge fund and banking investors they lined up—probably Citadel, which backed Gun Hill I, and the firm currently providing most of Relativity's funding, Elliott Associates. And while no one died because of this money, a few people at Deutsche Bank were terminated.

DB shuttered its film-financing division this summer and laid off star dealmaker Laura Fazio after the credit crunch made it nearly impossible to close a slate financing deal with hedge fund and banking investors. The bankers who arranged Gun Hill II, meanwhile, have decamped for Citigroup, which is in the midst of its own legal scuffle with Relativity over the terms of a subsequent deal.

It seems The International is far more timely than we realized, which, we guess, is a bad thing when it comes to selling tickets.