Netflix Starts Censoring Hollywood Movies In India; These Scenes Were Censored Silently

There has since some time now, been a constant cold war going on between OTT players and the Govt to censor their content on a national level.

The Internet and Mobile Association (IAMA) drafted a code of self regulation for OTT platforms on January 17, 2019 with title, ‘Code of Best Practices for Online Curated Content Providers’.

This refrains the OTT platforms to stream any content that is banned by Indian courts, disrespects the national emblem, outrages religious sentiments, promotes violence against the state, or indulges into child pornography.

In a first, Netflix has itself censored a Hollywood movie, before release on the Indian platform.

Which is this Hollywood Movie?

As per Medianama, Netflix has censored the Hollywood movie, Mission Impossible: Fallout, before releasing it on the Indian platform.

It has removed some starting scenes of the movie, which mentions the maps of Kashmir. This is the exact version of the film which was released in the Indian theatres, in 2018.

This is the first time Netflix has singularly been involved in censoring its content before publishing on the Indian platform.

Despite all the warnings and backlash received from the Indian government on censorship issues on OTT platforms, especially Netflix, the latter had never actually resolved to censoring one of its content on the platform.

The climax scene shows Kashmir, yet the censored version on Netflix very diligently skips the scene, which mainly introduces the location.

What Does Netflix have to Say?

Nothing!

When asked if it would stream the uncensored version if it could, the streaming platform literally commented no views.

As mentioned earlier, Netflix has never release a theatrically censored version of Hollywood movies, although they have tweaked and censored bits, for some Indian movie titles like Udta Punjab and Angry Indian Goddesses.

Similarly, Amazon Prime Video too censored this movie in the same fashion, releasing on its platform the theatrical version of the movie.

Then again, Prime has every now and then excised titles from content that might upset Indian viewers. They have even censored the launch of several Hollywood movies on their Indian platform.