Thanks for the update. This explains a lot and tracks with what I have read from the Chinese internet.

Unfortunately there are some that tried to blame it on the producers, but your explanation pretty much clarified and tracked with what I have said in this thread.

Anyway, the film has been withdrawn from a wide theatrical release due to receiving too much complaints, so I guess they won’t have to deal with it anymore.

Maybe if they're still in touch we can get the full story on this!

Ayo! So I was out all yesterday and completely missed this thread and ensuing light struggle session but I'll give some additional context as I know it:

The writer & director had no fucking idea lmao, he was completely blindsided by the changes and only found out when journalists in China (as to who they work for, no idea soz) started asking him questions about editing the cut and sent him basically the same screenshot (i think from a different platform, caption was different but it's the exact same comparison screenshot of the film). He first found out on the 15th. There are some other funny edits, such as additional steam vfx blurring Dave Franco's bare ass in the shower scene and some others he hasn't dropped in the group chat.

Seems like the producers & Neon people were claiming to have had no idea either, as they all apparently went straight to the lawyers after a day or so and were basically asking Michael to make the decision on whether to completely pull from China or not as they had 'clear breaches' of contracts and literal 'admissions' that the film had been altered without consent. At this point he's not making any additional money on where it's being distributed, so allowing him the decision to completely pull it and lose someone millions seems like an admission that someone fucked up/gambled wrong.

Without having read the thread for any investigation on the intricacies of film distribution in China, I can only go off a conversation we had last week when we were halfway to getting decently drunk and watching Salo at a cinema on Wednesday night. It seems like he's been told by various legal people/producers that this happens a bit - The distributors buy it and just make changes without authorisation to seemingly pre-empt the ratings/censor's office and hope that the hollywood crackers either never find out or care. As to whether it is a case of pre-alteration before submission to the gov, changes made by the gov / requested alterations, or even a sneaky recut provided to the chinese distributor without the director's knowledge, I can't say for sure. There seemed to be some suggestions that Michael's legal could demand that some alterations be reversed and have the distributor resubmit the film, which lends a bit of credence to the idea that distributors just fucking do this but go too far, self-censoring beyond necessity before even seeking gov approval or a film rating/classification.

Either way, the whole thing was a bit overshadowed by his second film being greenlit, but he was legitimately pissed at the alterations and now having to make a choice where he could be perceived as throwing LGBTQIA+ people under the bus for money (when he makes no additional money whatsoever from the film being distributed anywhere) or being seen as sinophobic and getting no traction in China ever again if he pulls it or blames anyone in China for the issue.

unrelated, but apparently the film was doing quite well in russia.

As somewhat of a BL gourmand, I was under the impression that they must've been relaxing the censorship around LGBT content lately, but I guess maybe they get around it by not releasing their shows on Chinese platforms? Either way, some of the most popular BLs this year have been Chinese, including the world's first live-action Omegaverse BL (and yes, the boys do get pregnant!).