With China emerging as the largest international market for Hollywood cinema, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained had a huge stance to boost its worldwide box office gross, before it was suddenly cancelled.

"We got the notice from our headquarters around 10:00 a.m. this morning but it was too late to cancel two viewings," said an official at one of several Shanghai theatres contacted. “We were only told that it was due to some technology problems and were told to cancel it. They didn't tell us when the film would be shown again." The Chinese government censors all movies before they can be released, and by their standards, Django would take some serious work. Nudity, politically contentious content and extreme violence are things they look for. And we’re guessing Tarantino’s slave revenge film was called up on all three, even though he thought he’d made the necessary changes. Some reports even suggest the film started playing before they pulled the plug, with some Chinese bloggers writing up the situation on their personal sites.

Quentino TarantinoTarantino addresses a crowd

A spokesman for the Chinese branch of Sony, the film's distributor, told the Southern Metropolis Daily: “These slight adjustments will not affect the basic quality of the film – such as tuning the blood to a darker colour, or lowering the height of the splatter of blood. Quentin knew how to adjust that, and it's necessary that he is the one to do it. You can give him suggestions, but it must be him who does [the tuning].”