Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that the release of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” on Thursday had been canceled with “great regret” in Hong Kong and neighboring Macao.
In an email reply to The Associated Press, the distributor said it was notified by cinemas that they could not show the film as scheduled, but it didn’t know why.
For many residents, the Winnie the Pooh character is a playful taunt of China’s President Xi Jinping and Chinese censors in the past had briefly banned social media searches for the bear in the country.
In 2018, the film “Christopher Robin,” also featuring Winnie the Pooh, was reportedly denied a release in China.
The film being pulled in Hong Kong has prompted concern on social media over the territory’s shrinking freedoms.
Kenny Ng, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s academy of film, refused to speculate on the reason behind the cancellation but suggested the mechanism of silencing criticism appeared to be resorting to commercial decisions.
Hong Kong is a former British colony that returned to China’s rule in 1997, promising to retain its Western-style freedoms.
But China imposed a national security law following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, silencing or jailing many dissidents.
In 2021, the government tightened guidelines and authorized censors to ban films believed to have breached the sweeping law.
Ng said the city saw more cases of censorship over the last two years, mostly targeting non-commercial movies, such as independent short films.