Netflix has released a list of movies and TV shows that various governments have demanded the streaming service to remove over the last five years.
In its 2019 Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Report, Netflix disclosed the nine times content had to be removed due to government interference.
2020 already has a takedown with Netflix’s comedy The Last Hangover removed from Singapore. The movie is a spoof of The Hangover where the apostles wake up after a night of partying to find Jesus missing. In 2019, the country also demanded the removal of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ after the movie was banned in Singapore in 2015, according to The Online Citizen.
Singapore’s last known removals were in 2018 when the country demanded three Netflix originals were taken off. The competition series Cooking on High, the documentary movie The Legend of 420 and the comedy series Disjointed were removed.
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In 2019, a single episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj titled “Saudi Arabia” was removed from Saudi Arabia’s Netflix. The host of the show tackles the Saudi Arabian government’s cover-up of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “This is the most unbelievable cover story since Blake Shelton won sexiest man alive,” Minhaj says in the special, according to NPR.
Representatives of Vietnam demanded Netflix to remove Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket in 2017. That same year, Germany requested Night of the Living Dead to be removed from the service.
Germany allowed the George Romero classic for years, but supposedly banned it due to a mistake. The country banned the 1990 remake and the 30th Anniversary Edition of the 1968 film, which had some scenes taken out and other material put in. The new version of the 1968 movie is banned, but the original 1968 cut apparently isn’t. That’s according to Schnittberichte.com, which was translated via Google Translate.
Netflix seemingly confirms that this is the case. The report says on page 6 that Netflix took down the movie because a “version of the film is banned in the country.”
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Finally, New Zealand asked for the documentary “The Bridge” to be removed from the country’s service in 2015. The filmmakers recorded more than a year of footage of the Golden Gate Bridge and caught 23 suicides on camera. They then interviewed some of the families and friends of the suicide victims that were identified in the footage. Netflix says that the film is classified as “objectionable” in New Zealand.
This Netflix report comes a few months after Blizzard banned a Hearthstone player for vocalizing support for Hong Kong’s liberation. A day after that incident, South Park was banned in China after the show aired an episode appropriately called “Band in China” where, among other things, a character is arrested in China for possession of marijuana and breaks a deal with the Chinese government to murder Winnie the Pooh so he can sell his weed in China and write a movie.
In February 2019, the horror game Devotion was taken off Steam after a Winnie the Pooh joke was found in it. Months later, developer Red Candle Games said that Devotion will not be re-released after the joke “caused immeasurable harm to Red Candle Games and our partner.”
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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.
Source: IGN.com Netflix Reveals 9 Titles the Government Made Them Remove