Screenings of Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino's Academy Award-winning revenge drama, was suddenly suspended at theaters on Thursday, its opening day in China.

Four theaters confirmed to China Daily that they received a notice on Thursday morning from China Film Group, the State-owned enterprise that has the exclusive right to import foreign films, requiring the film to be pulled from theaters nationwide for "technical reasons".

A theater manager who asked to remain anonymous said he was startled to see the notice.

"We don't have further explanations on the notice," he said. "The more urgent thing is to deal with the refunds for our customers and the re-scheduling of our screening. And we have not been informed when the film may be screened again."

The notice was issued around 10 am, after the movie had already started in some theaters. One micro-blogger complained that the movie was shown for only one minute and then stopped.

Zhang Miao, executive of the Chinese branch of the film's production company, Columbia Pictures, told Southern Metropolis Daily that Tarantino "agreed to slightly adjust the film for different markets" and edited the film himself for China.

The adjustments include making the blood darker and decreasing the height of blood spatter.

With movies such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, Tarantino has built a solid fan base in China. Django Unchained would have been his first film to be theatrically released on the Chinese mainland.