Vietnam has banned the domestic distribution of Sony's action film "Uncharted" due to a sequence containing a map depicting a disputed line drawn by China to stake its claim to broad swaths of the South China Sea, state media reported on Saturday.

On Chinese maps, the U-shaped "nine-dash line" denotes China's claims over broad swaths of the resource-rich South China Sea, including swaths of what Vietnam sees as its continental shelf, over which it has granted oil concessions.

"Uncharted," an action-adventure film based on a treasure-hunting video game series starring Tom Holland, was scheduled to open in theaters nationwide on March 18.

"The film was banned from distribution after we watched it and found it contained an illegal image of the infamous nine-dash line," the state-run Vietnam News Agency reported, citing Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Department of Cinema, a government agency charged with licensing and censoring foreign films.

Vietnam banned DreamWorks Animation's animated picture "Abominable" from theaters in 2019 and forced Netflix to drop some episodes of the "Pine Gap" series in 2021 over the same issue.

The Southeast Asian country protested twice this week against Chinese and Taiwanese military exercises in what it refers to as its exclusive economic zone, urging them to respect Vietnam's sovereignty and lawful maritime rights.