Woody Allen stopped his film Blue Jasmine from being screened in India because he objected to anti-tobacco adverts being inserted into smoking scenes, media reports said on Tuesday.

The movie has two smoking scenes and, under Indian law, health warnings on tobacco use are mandatory while showing smoking scenes in films or on television. The film that stars Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin had been slated for release on Friday.

The veteran film-maker had refused to make “customisations” in the film to accommodate the ads which led its Indian distributor PVR Pictures to cancel its release, the online edition of Outlook magazine reported.

“Allen has the creative control as per the agreement. He wasn’t comfortable with the disclaimer that we are required to run when some smoking scene is shown in films,” Deepak Sharma, chief operating officer of PVR Pictures, said earlier.

“He feels that when the scroll (the anti-smoking ad) comes, attention goes to it rather than the scene. We had to abide by the law and we don’t have control over the film, so it’s all right,” he said.

The film was to have been screened in about 30 Indian cinemas.

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