KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 14 – The Tourism Minister Nazri Aziz today said it was ridiculous to postpone the release of Beauty and the Beast in the country, the Malay Mail reported. The film features Disney’s first gay character. Major cinemas in Malaysia said today that they were indefinitely postponing the film’s release, which was due for Thursday.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” the Malay Mail quoted Nazri as saying. “Come on. I mean it is in the storyline so you don’t do that if it’s there. You don’t ban a film because of a gay character. All these years even without the gay character in the Beauty and the Beast, there are also gays in the world. I don’t think it is going to influence anyone.” He added: “We need to think, we must allow people to decide for themselves.”
In a Facebook post, Golden Screen Cinema said it will conduct a refund for customers who had already bought tickets for the film, as well as for related events. The postponement was due to an “internal review”, film distributor The Walt Disney Co (Malaysia) told The Star in an email. Beauty and the Beast is a live-action remake of Disney’s classic animated feature, which was the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award in 1991.
It stars Emma Watson as Belle, a bookworm of a young girl who falls in love with a monstrous Beast, played by Dan Stevens. Luke Evans is cast as the story’s main villain, Gaston. Gaston’s sidekick LeFou is expected to be torn between love and admiration for the villain. LeFou, played by Josh Gad, will have a “nice exclusively gay moment”, director Bill Condon had reportedly said in a UK interview.
