A shower scene was covered with extra steam. A gay couple suddenly became straight.
Now both audience and distributor are raging against how the film Together has been manipulated in China.
“It’s disgusting,” a user writes on a movie site.
To the left is the original scene and to the right the Chinese, censored, version.
Photo: Queer.de
It is about Together, a horror movie with Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who in previews on September 12 caused Chinese cinema visitors to raise their eyebrows, the BBC writes.
The film, written and directed by Australian Michael Shanks, is about a couple moving out in the countryside and suffering from a mysterious force that changes their lives and relationship. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, was hailed by critics and released in the US and Australia in July.
But in China, the audience got to see something else. A shower scene had been provided with extra steam to hide nudity. In a love scene, one of the men had been completely replaced with a woman. Other references to the same -sex relationship had also been deleted.
“This is no longer about censorship. It is distortion and falsification,” wrote a user on the popular Chinese movie site Douban, where the film received the rating 6.9 out of 10. Another raged: “They not only changed the action, they also trampled on the actor’s sexual orientation. It’s disgusting.”
International reactions: “Requires Stop”
Although the premiere was scheduled for September 19, the film on Thursday had not yet gone up to cinemas in China.
The film’s global distributor, Neon, this week went to counter -attack and condemned the changes:
“We have not approved this illegal haircut and demand that distribution be stopped,” the company said in a statement.
Chinese distributor Hishow has not yet commented on the incident.
This is not the first time Chinese biocencation has used AI to “dress” movies. In Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh suddenly got an AI-generated black dress in a naked scene.
At the same time, restrictions on LGBTQ content are increasing nationally in China. Since February, at least 30 authors of homoerotic literature have been arrested around the country, most young women.
