NEW YORK — The release of "The Kite Runner" has been delayed six weeks because of fears for the safety of three of the movie's Afghan child actors, Paramount Vantage, which is distributing the film, said yesterday.

As violence has escalated in Kabul, Afghanistan, concerns have mounted that the sexual nature of some scenes in "The Kite Runner" could prompt violence against three of the young boys starring in the film. In the film, based on the 2003 best-selling novel by Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini, the story's main character witnesses the rape of his friend but does nothing to stop it.

"The Kite Runner," originally scheduled to come out Nov. 2, will now be released Dec. 14 while the three boys — Zekiria Ebrahimi, Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada and Ali Danish Bakhty Ari — are removed from Kabul. It's feared that when the film is released, pirated DVDs could spread in Kabul, where those culturally offended could react violently to seeing such a rape scene.

Ahmad Khan is 12. Though the ages for Ali Danish and Zekiria weren't immediately available, they are of a similar age.

"The kids have been offered to come to the United States and stay out of the country for an extended period of time," said Megan Colligan, head of marketing at Paramount Vantage.

When exactly the boys will be relocated and for how long has not yet been determined, but Colligan said it would be temporary. They may remain in Kabul until the end of their school year on Dec. 6. They could potentially return home in March at the end of their summer vacation, once the release of "The Kite Runner" has come and gone.

"Our position is, we're not going to do anything that jeopardizes the kids and we are going to make sure that they're safe throughout this process," said Colligan, who added that the studio had been eyeing the situation as "The Kite Runner" played at fall film festivals.

Said Ahmad Jaan Mahmidzada, father of Ahmad Khan: "I am happy that at least they realized our problem here and made a decision about my son. I still do not know what will happen next, but at least I am less concerned about this issue than I was in the past."

Mahmidzada worries the film will stir ethnic tensions because it plays on stereotypes of ethnic groups in Afghanistan, pitting a Pashtun bully against a lower-class ethnic Hazara boy.

Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and the Hazara minority were among several ethnic-based factions that fought bitterly during the Afghan civil war in the 1990s. Thousands of Hazaras were slain as the predominantly Pashtun Taliban seized power in the mid-1990s.

Ethnic violence has subsided since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but Afghans fear any trigger that could revive tensions.