Monster Hunter series has been made into a movie by Hollywood, however, it is not having a great start after a racist joke was found offensive in China.
The main person who directed and produced this movie is none other than Paul W.S Anderson, who has also produced and directed every Resident Evil live-action films released so far. The director was hoping that this new movie opens big in China because of the popularity of the series there, however, it has stumbled right out of the gate.
As the movie opened in China, fans were quick to point out on the social media platforms how it contained a racist joke. This can be seen in a tweet by analyst Daniel Ahmad.
Anyway, this is going down about as well as you'd expect in China where it's being linked to the rhyme / phrase "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees – look at these?" which is considered offensive. pic.twitter.com/pQCFNQ86Je
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 4, 2020
This joke led to a call for a boycott of this movie on Chinese social media platforms. It was initially assumed that the release of the movie will be pulled from cinemas temporarily until the offensive scene was removed, but this is apparently not the case anymore.
A new update shared by Chinese box office analyst Gavin on Twitter suggests that the new notification from the government appears to stop cinemas from premiering the movie altogether.
Update: Theaters exhibitors just got new notification that the plan of releasing new copies(removing the scene) of Monster Hunter have been suspended.
It almost means it's banned here. https://t.co/ckqflJcu2w
— Gavin (@gavinincinema) December 5, 2020
So this suggests that the movie is almost certainly banned in China by now. This mistake would cost Hollywood a lot of money because they were banking on making it big in China. China has also led to record business for the Resident Evil franchise in the past so a repeat was expected here for the Monster Hunter movie as well.
This is going to be a big headache going forward for the financers of the movie. Capcom has already come forward and distanced itself away from the film. Since theaters in the USA and most of Europe are closed due to the restrictions of COVID-19, this is turning out to be an expensive disaster for now.
