An Australian film about a plane that crashes into the ocean on its way from China has been shelved because of its resemblance to the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight.

The Hollywood Reporter says Deep Water, a follow-up to Bait 3D, has been put on hold because of “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of flight MH370.

“Out of sensitivity to the Malaysia flight situation, we’ve decided to put it on pause for now,” Gary Hamilton, managing director of Arclight Films told hollywoodreporter.com.

Bait 3D, starring Aussies Xavier Samuel and Sharni Vinson, is about a group of shoppers who find themselves trapped with a crazed gunman and a giant great white shark in a flooded underground supermarket after a freak tsunami hits an Australian seaside community.

The 2012 film was a huge hit in China, grossing more than $7 million at the Chinese box office in just three days following its release.

Film website imdb.com says the sequel Deep Water depicts “a plane flying from Beijing to Sydney crashes into the Pacific Ocean. The surviving passengers and crew soon realise that their plane is starting to sink into a bottomless abyss and face terror beyond reckoning as they are surrounded by the deadliest natural born killers on earth.”

Late on Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told a media conference in Kuala Lumpur that new information showed flight MH370, with 239 people on board, had crashed into the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.