What might be Jenifer Lopez’s biggest live-action movie won’t be playing on Malaysian movie screens.
Hustlers, a film about stripper scamming men of Wall Street, was banned by Malaysia’s media censorship board over “excessive obscene content”. Bare breasts, erotic dances, and drug use are just some of the explicit content in the film that urged Malaysia to deem it “not suitable for public screening”.
The film’s Malaysian distributor Square Box Pictures confirmed the news of the prohibition on social media. But Hustlers continues to soar high in the United States’ and the United Kingdom’s box office charts.
In the film, Lopez stars as the ringleader of a group of erotic dancers who con their way into the wallets of their Wall Street clients. The movie’s premise is based on true events published in a New York Magazine article back in 2015.
Alongside Lopez, it stars Constance Wu, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart with rappers Lizzo and Cardi B appearing in smaller roles.
In the UK, the British Board of Film Classification rated the film with a 15 certificate attributing to its “sexualized nudity, strong sex references, language [and] drug misuse,” the BBC reports.
The conservative country of Malaysia has also moved to censor gay sex scenes in the Elton John musical biopic, Rocketman.
Earlier this year gay sex scenes in Rocketman were censored in Malaysia ahead of the Elton John biopic’s release there. A similar move was made by Russia for the film’s premiere in the country. Egypt, Samoa, and the Cook Islands had boycotted the film altogether over its themes of homosexuality.
Shera Elliott graduated from the New Mexico State University with a major in biology and a minor in Biological Basis of Behavior & Health Care Management. Shera grew up in Los Angeles, but moved to Las Cruces for college. Shera has written for several major publications including the Albuquerque Journal and NPR. Shera is a community reporter and also covers stories important important to all Americans.