{"id":303527,"date":"2017-03-21T12:09:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T12:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=303527"},"modified":"2017-03-21T12:09:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T12:09:44","slug":"beauty-and-the-beast-pulled-from-cinemas-in-kuwait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=303527","title":{"rendered":"Beauty and the Beast pulled from cinemas in Kuwait"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Beauty and the Beast has been pulled from Kuwaiti cinemas amid concerns from censors.<\/p>\n<p>The live-action remake of the classic animation makes LeFou, villain Gaston&#8217;s sidekick, the first openly gay character in a Disney film.<\/p>\n<p>A board member at the National Cinema Company, which operates most of Kuwait&#8217;s cinemas, said an edited version might be screened later this week.<\/p>\n<p>Disney is yet to comment on the move.<\/p>\n<p>Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast, has taken more than $350m (\u00a3282m) around the world and opened in Kuwait on Thursday, rated PG-13.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\">\n<figure style=\"width: 976px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/18065\/production\/_95250489_bb_lefou_disney.jpg\" alt=\"Luke Evans and Josh Gad in Beauty and the Beast\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image copyrightDISNEY LeFou, played by Josh Gad (right), is Disney&#8217;s first openly gay character<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But the National Cinema Company &#8211; which runs 11 of the 13 cinemas in the predominantly Muslim country &#8211; contacted those who had tickets to see the film on Monday to say the screenings had been cancelled.<\/p>\n<p>It cited &#8220;unforeseen difficulties&#8221; and promised a full refund.<\/p>\n<p>Board member Duaij Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah told the Associated Press news agency: &#8220;We were requested to stop the screening and further censor the movie for things that were deemed offensive by the Ministry of Information&#8217;s censorship department.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The film&#8217;s &#8220;exclusively gay moment&#8221; earlier led to censors in Malaysia requesting edits, but Disney pulled the film from release there. A drive-in cinema in the US state of Alabama has also cancelled screenings of the film.<\/p>\n<p>The film sees Josh Gad star as LeFou, opposite Luke Evans&#8217; Gaston.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beauty and the Beast has been pulled from Kuwaiti cinemas amid concerns from censors. The live-action remake of the classic animation makes LeFou, villain Gaston&#8217;s sidekick, the first openly gay character in a Disney film. A board member at the National Cinema Company, which operates most of Kuwait&#8217;s cinemas, said an edited version might be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":303529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[5333,3,5334],"class_list":["post-303527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-showbiz","tag-beauty-and-the-beast","tag-ghana-news","tag-kuwait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}