The saga of the release date for the Monster Hunter movie has yet another twist, just days after a controversy emerged over a particular line of dialogue. While the film recently had its release date changed to Christmas Day, you'll now be able to see it in theaters even earlier.

　　Sony's Monster Hunter will hit theaters domestically on December 18, GameSpot has learned. It's unknown at this time as to why the studio decided on the new release date. That leaves Tom Hanks' News of the World, Regina King's One Night In Miami, and the dark comedy Promising Young Woman as the movies premiering on December 25.

　　This move comes a day after Monster Hunter was pulled from theaters in China after a line of dialogue spoken by Jin Au-Yeung's character caused an outrage. Also going by the name MC Jin, the actor explained the scene for himself in an Instagram post, which you can see below.

　　"It's a pun and the way I portrayed the character and the emotion of it is, this is a moment for him to proudly proclaim that he is a Chinese soldier, not just his knees, but his arms, his head, his heart," he said in the video. And this has nothing to do with that stupid 'Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees,' whatever the heck that is, has nothing to do with it. If anything, why I'm so frustrated and it's eating at my heart is that I felt this was a scene that was supposed to be a moment for Chinese people to be like, 'Yes! There's a Chinese soldier!' That's all. So for it to be flipped upside down like this, it really, really, really is eating at me. But I will say, at the same time, for anybody that misunderstood or thought that it was meant to be belittling, I sincerely apologize, I do."

　　Monster Hunter follows Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her team as they are transported to an alien world, which is home to gigantic monsters. Together they will have to survive the experience in order to save their own world. The film hits theaters on December 18 in the United States.

　　Mat Elfring on Google+