Winnie the Pooh horror movie release canceled in Hong Kong

UPDATE DAY

Horror film 'Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey' will not be released in Hong Kong and Macau, the distributor announced on Tuesday a few days of the planned release.

This withdrawal illustrates the growing self-censorship in Hong Kong under pressure from Beijing, including in the artistic and cultural field.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been caricatured as Winnie the Pooh, the good-natured children's story character originally imagined by Briton Alan Alexander Milne, since a 2013 meeting with the slender President of the United States at the time, Barack Obama.

A far cry from the Disney and Soviet studio Soyuzmultfilm screen versions that made the character popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the “Blood and Honey” version is a gore adaptation of Rhys Frake -Waterfield released in February in the United States.

Initially promised for a very modest theatrical release, this low-budget production made thanks to the passage of rights into the public domain, has turned into a phenomenon benefiting from a worldwide release.

The distributor VII Pillars Entertainment expressed its “deep regret” for the cancellation in Hong Kong, without specifying the cause, in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

The Hong Kong administration said it had issued an authorization to broadcast for “Blood and Honey,” seeming to indicate that the film had not been censored.

But the organizer of a preview that was scheduled for Monday canceled the event, citing unspecified technical causes.

Winnie the Pooh has become a symbol of opposition to the Chinese president in recent years.

In response, China has repeatedly purge the internet even within its borders, and in 2018 refused the release of the Disney film “Christopher Robin” in which the rsonnage figured.