MANILA, April 27 (BNA) The Philippines has suspended all domestic screenings of the Hollywood movie “Uncharted”, due to a scene showing a disputed map of the South China Sea, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday.
The move comes shortly after Vietnam, another claimant in the South China Sea, banned the action movie Sony Pictures, which stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, Reuters reports.
The two-second frame in the film contains an image of the so-called nine-dash line, which represents China’s claims in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the scene “contradicts the national interest.”
The U-shaped line is a feature used on Chinese maps to depict its maritime territory in an area where Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines have competing claims.
A 2016 ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague invalidated China’s claims about nearly the entire waterway through which $3 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes annually. Beijing did not participate in the court proceedings and does not recognize the ruling.
The State Department said Sony’s Columbia Pictures Industries had ordered and complied with the film’s release. Sony Pictures did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
In 2019, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs asked DreamWorks to shut down cinema screenings of the animated movie “Abominable” after a scene showed the same Chinese nine-line script.