On May 12th an earthquake struck China leaving over 70,000 people dead and over 5 million people homeless. During a red-carpet interview with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News, past-her-prime movie star Sharon Stone attributed it to bad karma. Her exact words were, according to the Associated Press, "'I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?'" China, 1 billion strong and understandably upset about some other stuff going on, responded by banning her movies nation-wide.
Some responded diplomatically to Stone's comments. A woman at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said "'it's unlikely that we will respond.'" Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, has responded though. The Hollywood Reporter claims that See-Yuen has banned Sharon Stone movies from playing in his theater chain and seeing as UME owns chains in China's biggest urban markets - Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou - it's safe to say that's pretty much a nation-wide ban.
Last year Stone was a guest of the Shanghai International Film Festival but with 1 billion people boycotting you it's safe to assume DVD sales of Basic Instinct 2 and Catwoman will drop. Hooray China!
