China delays release of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Was it over Bruce Lee row?

Daughter of martial arts legend has reportedly appealed to China’s National Film Administration over star’s controversial depiction in film

Shannon Lee had called portrayal a ‘mockery’, showing her father as an ‘arrogant, egotistical punching bag’

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Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth fights Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh, in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment

Published: 5:29am, 19 Oct 2019Updated: 10:00pm, 19 Oct 2019

Distribution of Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood in China has been postponed indefinitely, the Los Angeles Times confirmed on Friday.

The movie was to be released October 25 in the Asian nation, which offers a vast potential audience. The Chinese distributor is Beijing-based Bona Film Group, which has a 25 per cent stake in the film.

While the reason for the delay was unclear – the film’s violence is one possibility – it could also be due to an appeal for changes reportedly made directly to China’s National Film Administration by Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, according to sources cited by The Hollywood Reporter.

Shannon Lee, chief executive of the Bruce Lee Family Co, was not immediately reachable on Friday morning for comment. However, when Tarantino’s film came out in the US in July, she called her father’s depiction a “mockery”.

“The script treatment of my father as this arrogant, egotistical punching bag was really disheartening – and, I feel, unnecessary,” Lee told the Times over the summer.

Tarantino later said at a news conference that Bruce Lee was “kind of an arrogant guy”, prompting Shannon Lee to say the director “could shut up about it” or own up to the fact he did not know what her father was like.