HONG KONG — The U.S. film ‘’Django Unchained’’ was abruptly pulled from theaters in China on its opening day Thursday, a surprising move that came after some scenes were reported to have been edited to conform to the wishes of Chinese censors.
No reason was given for the decision to suspend the film’s opening. Workers at Beijing theaters said the film had been pulled because of unspecified technical problems with the movie.
The film was to have made its debut Thursday after weeks of heavy promotion in China. News reports have said that some of the film’s graphic violence was edited to make it acceptable to state censors, including altering the color of fake blood in violent scenes and limiting how far the blood splattered.
Such revisions are becoming increasingly common before U.S. films are shown in China, with U.S. filmmakers adhering to the demands of Chinese censors as they seek to tap into the country’s lucrative market of filmgoers. China is the second-largest movie market in the world, behind the United States.
‘’Django Unchained’’ won two Oscars in February, including one for best original screenplay, which went to the film’s director, Quentin Tarantino. The movie focuses on a slave named Django and a bounty hunter who pursue a particularly brutal slave owner.
Before the film’s planned opening, the Chinese media quoted a Sony Pictures official who described the changes made to appease censors and suggested that Mr. Tarantino had played a role in the changes.
‘‘What we call bloodshed and violence is just a means of serving the purpose of the film, and these slight adjustments will not affect the basic quality of the film — such as tuning the blood to a darker color, or lowering the height of the splatter of blood,’’ Zhang Miao, director of Sony Pictures’ Chinese branch, was quoted as saying to Southern Metropolis Daily. ‘‘Quentin knew how to adjust that, and it’s necessary that he is the one to do it. You can give him suggestions, but it must be him.’’
Mr. Tarantino, whose films are known for their no-holds-barred depictions of gory violence, has not commented on reports that he toned the film down for Chinese censors.
As U.S. moviemakers have tried to conform to the demands of Chinese censors, they have increasingly been willing to bend over backward in their efforts, even allowing government officials onto movie sets to watch the filming, as was the case with Disney and Marvel’s ‘’Iron Man 3.’’
At one Bejing movie theater, an employee said “Django Unchained” was shown after midnight Thursday to about 150 people. Another worker said the movie was then ordered taken down later for technical reasons, adding, “there’s probably something in the film that’s not up to standard.
Gao Jun, the former president of the New Film Association, a movie service company in China, said the movie could have been pulled for either censorship reasons or a slackening demand for Hollywood movies. He also said such delays are not uncommon, citing recent weeklong delays for “Lost in Thailand and Jackie Chan’s “Chinese Zodiac.”
China does not have a movie ratings system like those in the United States or Europe that would give viewers a chance to judge in advance whether a film is too violent for children or teenagers. It relies instead on the brute force of censorship: movies and television shows either have scenes excised or are banned entirely.
The absence of a ratings system “means the movies on screen need to be suitable for kids – that issue has been debated for years,” said Henry Siling Li, a media specialist at the China Executive Leadership Academy of Pudong, an elite school in the Shanghai area for training rising stars in the Chinese Communist Party.
“We have to remove nudity and violence from movies” as long as there is the possibility that children will be in a cinema when a movie is shown, he said.
Mr. Li added that he did not know what the difficulty might have been with “Django Unchained,” but expressed surprise that it had been pulled at the last moment because it had been the subject of a saturation advertising campaign that usually would not be conducted if a movie’s future were in doubt.
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Amy Quin and Sue-Lin Wong contributed from Beijing.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/business/media/django-unchained-pulled-from-chinas-theaters.html?partner=rss&emc=rss