Winnie the Pooh film dumped in Hong Kong amid censorship claims | Arts and Culture
Cancellation of screenings of British horror film prompts speculation decision relates to sensitives around Xi Jinping.
Hong Kong cinemas have cancelled the screening of a horror film based on Winnie the Pooh, prompting speculation the film was pulled because of comparisons internet users made between the children’s character and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, a British slasher film that features the titular character terrorising a group of young university women, was scheduled to be released in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on Thursday.
Moviematic, the organiser of a pre-release screening of the film, said on social media on Tuesday that its screening had been cancelled due to “technical reasons”.
Local cinema chains Broadway Circuit and Emperor Cinemas on Tuesday appeared to have removed references to the film or its screening from their websites. Cinema City Langham Place, a theatre in the Mongkok district, still listed the film on its website as of Tuesday evening.
A search of the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration’s database of films certified for release in Hong Kong turned up no results for the title.
The Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration and VII Pillars Entertainment, the film’s local distributor, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Winnie the Pooh, created in 1926 by British children’s book author AA Milne, has been censored in mainland China since 2013, when internet users began using the fictional bear’s likeness to poke fun at Xi.
Howard Elias, a local film reviewer, said on his blog he had been unable to reach the film’s distributor, but he suspected he had been “pressured by our so-called ‘patriots’ who would definitely be unhappy about Pooh being depicted on screen in such an unsavoury manner”.
In 2018, Chinese censors blocked the release of Christopher Robin, a live-action film following the adventures of Winnie the Pooh’s best friend as an adult.
While Hong Kong was promised rights and freedoms not available in mainland China as a condition of its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the territory has cracked down hard on free expression since the introduction of a Beijing-decreed national security law in 2020.
While the law officially targets subversion, secession, colluding with foreign forces and terrorism, it has in practice been used to wipe out practically all political opposition and dissent towards Beijing in the former British colony.
In 2021, Hong Kong’s legislature passed a new film censorship law, further raising fears for the future of the local film industry, which once was widely acclaimed as the “Hollywood of the East”.
Hong Kong’s international film festival last year dropped two films from its lineup after the government refused to grant approval for the screenings.
