The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced Tuesday that the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) had issued an order to pull out the movie “Uncharted” from theaters for a scene that depicts the controversial U-shaped line in the South China Sea which China uses as the legal basis of its ownership over the islands.
DFA Assistant Secretary for Public and Cultural Diplomacy Eduardo Meñez said the MTRCB released its cease and desist order on March 18.
However, the Playstation-game-turned-movie was already shown in theaters in the Philippines for two weeks starting February 23.
The DFA had requested MTRCB “to re-evaluate and pull out the screening of the Sony movie “Uncharted” in Philippine cinemas following a scene containing an image of the nine-dash line maritime claims of China that is contrary to national interest.”
The MTRCB “responded favorably” and issued a cease and desist order to Columbia Pictures, the distributor of the “Uncharted” movie to the Philippines, it added.
Vietnam, which also claims the whole South China Sea, banned the movie on March 12, ahead of its scheduled theatrical release on March 18.
Doris Torres, Marketing Director of Columbia Pictures in the Philippines, said they have no comment on the MTRCB order.
“Uncharted” is an action-adventure film about a treasure hunter and bartender, played by Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland, on a hunt for lost treasures by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Scenes included their global quest for the 500-year old treasure, including the Philippines. One of the scenes showed the nine-dash line in a map that lasted only for two seconds.
“The nine-dash claim is contrary to national interest, which has been settled in the 2016 Arbitral Award. The Arbitral Tribunal held that China’s nine-dash line has no legal basis as its accession to UNCLOS has extinguished any of its rights that it may have had in the maritime areas in the South China Sea. China also never had historic rights in the waters within the nine-dash line,” the DFA said.
In 2019, the Department requested the MTRCB to pull out the DreamWorks animated feature “Abominable” after a scene showed the Chinese nine-dash line.
Last year, the DFA has also written Netflix Philippines to remove scenes in the Australian series “Pine Gap” where the Chinese nine-dash line was shown. Netflix complied and removed two episodes from the spy drama series.