Judd Apatow Calls Out Hollywood Censorship in China: ‘They’ve Bought Our Silence with Money’

Judd Apatow is refusing to let Hollywood off the hook for allowing itself to be censored in international markets such as China in order to reap financial rewards. During a conversation with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on “Mavericks with Ari Melber,” Apatow criticized Hollywood for staying away from and/or cutting out content that is critical of certain countries in order to make money.

“A lot of these giant corporate entities have business with countries around the world, Saudi Arabia or China, and they’re just not going to criticize them,” Apatow said, “and they’re not going to let their shows criticize them or they’re not going to air documentaries that go deep into truthful areas because they make so much money.”

Apatow added, “So while we’re going, ‘Can we say this joke, can we not say that joke,’ on a much bigger level, they have just completely shut down critical content about human rights abuses in China, and I think that’s much scarier.”

As an example, the “Knocked Up” and “King of Staten Island” director said studios would shoot him down if he ever pitched a movie about a man who escapes Chinese concentration camps, referring to the imprisonment of Muslim Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province. Disney has recently come under fire for filming part of its live-action “Mulan” film in Xinjiang and us... (Read more)

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