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'Schitt's Creek' creator Dan Levy claims Delta cut gay love scenes from 'Rocketman'

Dan Levy claims Delta cut gay love scenes from "Rocketman." (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
Dan Levy claims Delta cut gay love scenes from "Rocketman." (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Daniel Levy — the co-creator of the Emmy-nominated show “Schitt's Creek,” in which he serves as the showrunner and plays a character, who identifies as pansexual — took aim at apparent censorship on a recent Delta flight.

On Monday, the openly-gay Levy shared on Twitter that his Delta flight's onboard entertainment had allegedly cut the gay love scenes in “Rocketman,” the biographical musical based on the life of Elton John. The tweet comes just weeks after the airline announced it would be reviewing their process of managing the content of their in-flight entertainment.

Near the end of October, Delta Air Lines received criticism for excluding certain scenes from the movie “Booksmart” from their flights. Olivia Wilde, who made her directorial debut with the teenage-centered film, called out the alleged censorship of the film.

"I finally had the chance to watch an edited version of Booksmart on a flight to see exactly what had been censored," Wilde wrote on Oct. 30. "Turns out some airlines work with a third party company that edits the movie based on what they deem inappropriate. Which, in our case, is ... female sexuality?"

According to Wilde, the words "vagina" and "genitals" had been edited out of her film. A scene featuring female masturbation and a scene where two teenage girls watch porn was also allegedly edited out of the film on flights.

"What message is this sending to viewers and especially to women? That their bodies are obscene? That their sexuality is shameful?" Wilde questioned at the time.

On Oct. 29, passengers on Delta also questioned the apparent censorship of “Rocketman.”

"On @Delta today discovered that #Rocketman is stripped of almost every gay reference or scene that @eltonofficial fought to keep in the film’s mainstream release, including a simple chaste kiss," one person tweeted.

Shortly after Wilde's and other social media users’ critiques were shared in late October and early November, Delta addressed the issue.

In a statement from earlier this month, which was provided to Yahoo Lifestyle, Delta responded: "We are immediately putting a new process in place for managing content available through Delta’s in-flight entertainment. Studios often provide videos in two forms: a theatrical, original version and an edited version. We selected the edited version and now realize content well within our guidelines was unnecessarily excluded from both films. We are working to make sure this doesn’t happen again,"

The statement continued: "The studio has agreed to provide a special Delta edit that retains the LGBTQ+ love scenes in both Booksmart and Rocketman that will be on our flights as soon as possible. Currently, we have Gentleman Jack, Imagine Me and You, and Moonlight onboard and countless content in the past that clearly shows it is not our practice to omit LGBTQ+ love scenes."

Regarding the yet-to-be made changes, a Delta spokesperson told Yahoo Lifestyle that the statement is "still current as we are in the process of rolling out updated versions of these two movies to in-flight entertainment systems on our fleet."

Representatives for Dan Levy did not immediately respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment.

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