>It's worth noting that the original demand of the hackers was for money from Sony in exchange for not releasing embarrassing information. There was no mention of the movie "The Interview"

It very well could be an extortionist, but I think they clearly intended to give the impression that it was allegedly about The Interview, first subtly then explicitly. No public message, or leaked private message, was ever released that showed the hackers asking for money. It is possible they sent a private demand for money to Sony which has yet to be released, but that would just be speculation.

Their group name, constant requests to "preserve world peace", releasing all sorts of movies and scripts except anything relating to The Interview, and then explicitly calling The Interview a "movie of terrorism" seems to show that they intended to use the movie as a bargaining chip from day 1.