TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Hollywood blockbuster "Uncharted" has been banned from screens across Vietnam due to "illegal images" that depict China’s "nine-dash line" territorial claim of the South China Sea.

Vietnam’s National Film Evaluation Council announced the ban on Saturday (March 12) after the action flick was scheduled for national release in the country on March 18, per a VNExpress News report.

"The film was banned from distribution after we watched it and found it contained an illegal image of the infamous nine-dash line," Vi Kien Thanh, head of Vietnam’s Department of Cinema, was quoted as saying.

The so-called nine-dash line has been used by China to illegally lay claim to almost all the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the “East Sea.” China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan all claim parts of the body of water.

This is not the first time claimant countries have censored or criticized American entertainment content over the issue. A similar case played out in the Philippines late last year when Netflix removed two episodes from its series “Pine Gap.” Regulators deemed it “unfit for public exhibition” after it featured a map showing Beijing’s same nine-dash line.

In October 2019, Taiwan's Ministry of Culture said the film “Abominable” disrespects Taiwan's sovereignty, and a Tainan city councilor at the time described it as promoting the "nine-dash line" for "bandits" (in reference to Chinese communists.)

Though Taiwan criticized the film’s depiction of the sea, the country could not take legal action since Article 26, which previously outlawed movies that "harm national interests or ethnic dignity," had been removed from the Motion Picture Act (電影法).