Tom Holland starring, Uncharted gets banned in Vietnam over showing of illegal maps. The maps mentions China’s claim over the disputed territory in Southeast Asia. The film also casts Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Banderas was to be arrived in cinemas from March 18 in Vietnam.
Vietnamese media announced the ban last Saturday, “The film was banned from distribution after we watched it and found it contained an illegal image of the infamous nine-dash line,” Vietnam News Agency reported.
The ‘nine dash line’ describes China’s claim over the South China Sea as its own. That claimed area includes rich minerals and energy resources along with some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Some extends of the mentioned territory are also claimed by Taiwan, Indonesia, The Philippines, Malaysia, the Paracel and Spratley islands including Vietnam.
Because of this disputed territory, before this ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, was also cut from Vietnam as it showed a scene with the map of world on designer bag which showed the disputed area under Beijing’s control. The next year, DreamWorks’ animated ‘Abominable’ was also pulled out from cinemas after 10 days when viewers reported the nine dash line map to authorities attention.
Although Vietnam has a relatively small film market, it surely is going to affect the overall box office gross for Uncharted by millions. Uncharted has already made $277 million from an estimated budget of $120 million, not so bad so far. But this surely is going to create problems for the American Films which are aiming for the worldwide appeal especially when it comes to China and other territories having the disputes.
The film Uncharted story line follows up Nathan Drake as he teams up with Sully, trying to locate a lost treasure and discovering the fate of his older brother who disappeared. Currently Uncharted is ranking #3 on domestic Box Office after Robert Pattison’s Batman and Holland’s Spiderman: No way home.