Angelina Jolie

LOS ANGELES: Filmmaker and actress Angelina Jolie said on Friday she has chicken pox and will not be able to attend events for World War Two drama “Unbroken,” her second film as director.

“I just want to be clear and honest why I will be missing the ‘Unbroken’ events in the next few days, which is that I found out last night that I have chicken pox,” Jolie said in a video released by Universal Pictures on YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_FNAj15tdk)

“Unbroken,” the harrowing survival story of prisoner of war and Olympic runner Louis Zamperini, will have its US premiere in Los Angeles on Monday. It opens in theaters on Dec. 25.

On Thursday, the film failed to pick up any nominations for Golden Globe awards, one of the biggest events in the film awards season that ends with the Academy Awards in February.

“So I will be home, itching and missing everyone and I can’t believe it because this film means so much to me. I just can’t believe it, but such is life,” said the 39-year-old mother of six and wife of Brad Pitt.

At the end of the 39-second video, she throws up her hands and then waves goodbye.

On Wednesday, Jolie attended Hollywood Reporter’s annual Women in Entertainment breakfast honoring the 100 most powerful women in the business.

Among those she greeted was Amy Pascal, the beleaguered co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, whose e-mails have been leaked by hackers behind the massive cyberattack on the studio, a unit of Sony Corp.

In an e-mail exchange between Pascal and producer Scott Rudin that was reported by Gawker on Tuesday, Rudin called Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat” because of her demands during a remake of “Cleopatra.” Jolie has not responded publicly to the remarks since the e-mail exchange was disclosed.

“Unbroken” has not been released in Japan yet, but it has already struck a nerve in a country still fighting over its wartime past.

And the buzz on social networks and in online chatter is decidedly negative over the film that depicts a US Olympic runner who endures torture at a Japanese World War II prisoner-of-war camp.

Some people are calling for a boycott of the movie, although there is no release date in Japan yet. It hits theaters in the US on Dec. 25.

Others want that ban extended to Jolie, the director — unusual in a nation enamored with Hollywood, especially Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt, who both have reputations as Japan-lovers.

The movie follows the real-life story of Louis Zamperini as told in a 2010 book by Laura Hillenbrand. The book has not been translated into Japanese, but online trailers have provoked outrage. Zamperini, played by Jack O’Connell, survived in a raft for 47 days with two other crewmen after a plane crash, only to be caught by the Japanese and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Especially provocative is a passage in the book that refers to cannibalism among the troops. It is not clear how much of that will be in the movie, but that is too much for some.

“But there was absolutely no cannibalism,” said Mutsuhiro Takeuchi, a nationalist-leaning educator and a priest in the traditional Shinto religion. “That is not our custom.”

Takeuchi acknowledged Jolie is free to make whatever movie she wants, stressing that Shinto believes in forgive-and-forget.

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