Thai Supreme Court Orders Fox Film Studio To Rehab Maya Bay From 'The Beach' 22 Years After Filming

It has been almost two decades since the release of 20th Century Fox’s The Beach. A Thai Supreme court has now ordered that the once-idyllic Maya Bay on southern Thailand’s Phi Phi Leh island should be rehabilitated — and the film studio will have to chip in for it.

According to Vice, when this cult classic film was shot between 1998 and 1999, the movie crew gave the beach a makeover to make it look more tropical.

To complete this look, they allegedly uprooted vegetation growing on sand dunes, introduced alien plant species, and planted dozens of coconut trees — changes that have since ravaged the local ecosystem.

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The film also in return attracted tourists to the site, however, this only aggravated the environment more and the pollution almost destroyed the coral nearby. The damage had become so severe that in 2018 local authorities shut it down indefinitely to begin rehabilitating the natural ecosystem.

Local authorities had also filed a lawsuit against Thai government agencies, 20th Century Fox, and a Thai film coordinator, seeking 10 million baht (roughly $273,000) as compensation for the environmental damage caused to the area during production way back in 1999, The Guardian reported.

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It is also reported that when the film was shot, many environmental campaigners tried to stop the shooting but failed at it.

Fox, as well as DiCaprio, claimed that the film's crew left the beach in the same condition, in fact, even better than that. However, the new ruling by the Thai Supreme Court on Tuesday suggests otherwise.

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At the time, Leonardo DiCaprio — now known for his environmental activism — assured critics who expressed concern over the film’s environmental impact that the crew would be leaving the beach “better off than it was before.”

“From what I see everything is okay. I have seen nothing that had been damaged in any way,” he said.

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But in their landscaping, the crew reportedly uprooted bushes that lined the beach and held the sand together to prevent erosion, planting mature palm trees in their place that weren’t native to the region.

Not only this, but to give the beach a complete tropical look, they even uprooted the palm trees and bamboo fences they set up to hold everything in place — large amounts of sand continued to break into the ocean.

One local witness described the area after the film crew left as a “forlorn scene of ugly bamboo fences and dead native plants.”

There was no official ruling on the lawsuit against 20th Century Fox and Thai film studio Santa International Film Productions until 2012, however, when a civil court ruled that the Royal Forest Department was liable for rehabilitating Maya Bay.

In 2012, a civil court handling the lawsuit against 20th Century Fox and Thai studio Santa International Film Productions ruled that the Royal Forest Department would be responsible for the rehab project. This latest ruling, though, requires the department to come up with a plan within 30 days — and stipulates that Fox will supply the 10 million baht for it.

The beach ultimately closed down in October 2018 when almost 6,000 tourists a day were visiting each day. Conditions have improved enough within the last four years that the bay was reopened in January 2022, but local authorities have capped the number of visitors allowed to help the environment heal.

Even though sincere efforts have been made over the past few years to restore the beach, it was once again shut down last month to continue further restoration, with plans to open again in October.