North Korea has threatened a "resolute and merciless" retaliation against the United States unless it bans a forthcoming Hollywood movie about assassinating the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, BBC News reported, warning that failure to do so would be considered as an "act of war."

The statements, attributed by North Korea's official news agency KCNA to an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman, did not mention the film by name, but it was clear that the criticism was directed towards The Interview , an action-comedy directed by Evan Goldberg and starring James Franco and Seth Rogen, which will be released in the U.S. on October 14.

The film's plot portrays a dim view about North Korea's "satirical treatment of its leaders and is notoriously paranoid about perceived threats to their safety," according to The Guardian. In the film, Rogen and Franco play celebrity TV journalists who secure an exclusive interview with Kim, only to be subsequently recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate the leader.

The film's teaser trailer shows a lookalike actor playing Kim Jong-un, as well as fight scenes involving what appear to be North Korean tanks and helicopters, a nuclear missile launch, and calling it the "most dangerous country on Earth". "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," the North Korea spokesman was quoted by the state KCNA news agency as saying.

He added that the "reckless U.S. provocative insanity" of mobilizing 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 U.S. administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless counter-measure will be taken."

Rogen, who co-wrote the script for The Interview, recently said he was inspired by journalists' access to world leaders in possibly carrying out assassinations. "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," he told Yahoo in a recent interview.

He added that 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.