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Beaten! But I'll post what I was typing up anyway.

John Woo, Chow Yun-fat Classics Among 156-Film Golden Princess Library Acquired by Shout! Studios

Fuck. I can’t wait for upgraded copies of Hard Boiled and the Killer.

That is huge news. Shout has done some great work on other Asian films in the past so I trust them to put out excellent releases. The John Woo films will be mine!

They better be in 4K, too.

Huge, incredible news.

It looks like City on Fire is one of the first that will be released this year.

Sacrilegious opinion (maybe): but I enjoy City on Fire a tad more as a movie than The Killer. The Killer hits more highs and has the better set of pieces obviously, but for some reason I get into City on Fire easier .

But yeah it’s great to finally have these remastered and Shout always has sales so it’s nice to be able to buy them at a reasonable price.

For those who don't follow this stuff closely, this is truly a "when pigs fly" type situation. I think most fans had just sort of resigned themselves to the idea that these movies would never see the light of day again in the West. I even just dropped something like $150 on the Disk Kino WCL A Better Tomorrow 4k from China because I didn't think we'd ever get it here.

I will say that Shout would not be my first choice to release these, but I suppose they're the only indie big enough to pull off a deal like this. It will be interesting to see how they handle the European market and if they'll sublicense these out.

I friggin' LOVE City on Fire. I don't know if it's better than The Killer, but if it isn't it's damn close. And with all the Reservoir Dogs controversy, I enjoy it as a companion piece to Tarantino's film, one that fills in the blanks much better. Like how can a cop infiltrate a gang so easily? CoF takes that "Mr. Orange" segment of Dogs and expands it to feature length (even though it came first).

They will be sub-licensing.

I only have about 15 movie DVDs left in my collection, and this upgrade will take care of about 1/4 of them.

Contact Shout:

"Apparently, our manufacturer, without our knowledge, built some (but not all) units of these two sets using clear Blu-ray cases that are slightly larger than our standard spec. As a result, they fit in the rigid slipcase, but make it very difficult to get the cases out.

We'll replace the cases for both, which should break down per the below. Please confirm your current mailing address and we will dispatch the replacements to you as soon as possible.

*****

Shaw Brother Classics, Vol. 5:
5 x 2-disc clear Blu-ray cases
1 x 1-disc clear Blu-ray case

Golden Harvest Vol. 2: Shining Stars Blu-ray:
4 x 2 disc clear Blu-ray cases"

A 156 4K UHD box set is a bit much isn't it?

And being Shout Factory 134 of them will have scratches.

I don’t get why people complain (or make comparisons) to both films when they are totally different to one another . I guess they share the one main arching plotline (a heist), how they go examining it is totally different.

Back to City on Fire, this one features Chow Yun Fat at his best as he gets to show off his comedic chops with the fiancée plotline . If there’s one thing that I think that Western (read US) audiences missed when he broke through (in the US anyway) is his charisma, humor and charm.

My favorite character in City on Fire is the douchabag police inspector played by Roy Cheung. He’s such an asshole that you root for him to get his commupeance (or however you spell that).

Of some of the other films, I think Bullet in the Head is interesting because it deviates from the usual Woo playbook at that time , although it does share similarities to Heroes Shed no Tears. And Once a Thief is woo doing a French New Wave homage. I didn’t realize this when I watched this years ago.

Im looking forward to Chinese Ghost Story; I’m pretty sure I saw it years ago in the late 80s on a Betamax

Interesting. I wonder if there's a chance Arrow UK might get the John Woo films. They knocked it out of the park with their Bruce Lee UHDs IMO.

Thanks for the heads-up on this. Hopefully they won’t require the sets to be purchased from their site. Presumably they’ll accept my receipt from a different seller.

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Definitely great news about the Golden Princess library. Someone mentioned the “when pigs fly” nature of it, but I was always confident it would happen if the pockets were deep enough and the timing was right. There was no way the Kowloon Development Company (as it’s now known) didn’t know the ‘international demand’ for what they were sitting on. I’d always hear people on other forums claiming that the company had zero interest, didn’t care, etc. I think they always had an interest, and cared, but were waiting for the right time, and the right buyer to take the whole enchilada rather than cherry-picking the jewels, which is probably why they shunned so many pursuers over the years.

I do think the timing is ideal in regards to the resurgence of interest in preserving and celebrating true Hong Kong culture, and this is one of those rare treasure troves that will contribute to that for as long as it lasts. I mentioned this in the Asian Cinema thread just the other day, but there’s a reason two deeply localized films – TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS and LAST DANCE – became the most financially successful Hong Kong films, domestically no less, of all time in 2024, and performed well internationally as well. There is a prevailing sense that Hong Kong is well on its way to being fully subsumed by mainland China, to becoming just another “China” city, with its character and its history essentially erased or marginalized by the regime. This IS happening, and HK expats that I know here have lamented it recently. They’re glad they got out, but it saddens them to see what’s happening there, and thus movies, songs, comics, and other media that throw back to the glory days are doing solid business (as long as their makers toe certain lines, of course).

But what better time for KDC to finally strike a deal for these films? Not only will they scratch a huge itch for most HK film fanatics – including folks like me who never bothered with the expensive boxes from mainland China or the full-on boots from Hong Kong Rescue – but presumably they’ll also be available for streaming and theatrical screenings and whatnot, which will be a great way for actual Hong Kongers outside of Asia to further reconnect with a truly golden era.

As mentioned in the Variety article, many of these have been available across Asia on Blu-ray or DVD all along, so all one had to do was import. The HK Blu’s were a) legal and b) reasonably affordable if you bought them in sales. I have a substantial number of them and thankfully most look really good and many have mono or 2.0 soundtracks. The main drawbacks were the lack of bonus features and – on some of them at least – ‘remastered’ 6.1 and 7.1 soundtracks that ranged from barely tolerable to extremely phoney and annoying, so it’s nice to know that Shout will finally release these with their original mono (and/or stereo) audio tracks intact.

It seems like the Woo films and a few other well-known titles are getting most of the press, naturally, but those top tier films never truly went away. I see folks at other forums acting like they’ve been denied any and all opportunities to see stuff like KILLER and HARD BOILED when they’ve been readily accessible in various older incarnations – and often quite cheap – this whole time. While the best-known titles are indeed the Crown Jewels, there are many more in this haul that have yet to be released on a Blu-ray even in Hong Kong, so presumably Shout will have a lot of true ‘firsts’ on the format in the years ahead, and many on 4K as well.

One concern with this is the “whole catalog” nature of the deal, even though it was clearly the only way it was going to happen. The “stuff everybody wants” makes up maybe 10-15% of the catalog, and I’m sure Shout will go all-out on sparkly treatments for those (plus theatrical screenings, streaming, etc.), but I wonder if they’ll sit on other stuff if they don’t consider it financially viable. I’d love to see all of the films released eventually even though I already own a lot of them on Blu. Not everything there needs a super-deluxe 4K + Blu-ray + Book + Goodies set, and quite a few would make great boxed sets grouped by an actor, director, genre, etc., with the usual bonuses.

As Dex noted, Shout apparently will sublicense these to distributors in other regions (Eureka, 88 Films, etc), which means different supplements, alternate commentaries by the same people, etc. This could get costly! On the other hand, it would be cool if they license some of the ‘lesser’ titles to other U.S. labels like Vinegar Syndrome, Severin, etc. That might speed up the process of getting more of the catalog into our hands.

BTW, am I wrong in assuming that this deal officially leaves Warner Archive as the only company sitting on a small goldmine of vintage HK titles? I’m still not hopeful that we’ll ever see
much movement there.

Oh well, now to wait, I guess.

Further to my previous post:

Beyond the obvious ‘heavy hitters’ that everyone is itching for, myself included, I’m equally hopeful about seeing ‘sets’ made of the some other key titles in the library, although some of these are probably better suited to other labels rather than Shout itself:

ACES GO PLACES 1-5
(I have the HK Blu-ray boxed set, but all the films had questionable 6.1/7.1 soundtracks. Only 1-4 were ever released in the U.S., on DVD by Anchor Bay.)

TIGER ON BEAT 1-2
(Only a HK Blu for the first film. No original audio on it, so I passed. I think Part 2 never got further than the old non-anamorphic Universe DVD)

The second one has one of those only-in-Hong-Kong mishaps that actually stayed in the film!

HAPPY GHOST 1-5
(Doubt Shout will release these, but maybe they’d sublicense them? Four of them should be in the deal as they’re Cinema City or Golden Princess productions. The fourth one might not be, which would mess up a boxed set. Lots of Hong Kong actresses more or less started out in these, or became more popular because of them)


ALL THE WRONG CLUES + ALL THE WRONG SPIES
(a couple of fun comedies; one directed by Tsui Hark, the other by Teddy Robin, who co-stars in both)


A Chow Yun-Fat collection that doesn’t include the top-shelf titles he’s known for, but some mix (or mixes) of equally good (or debatably good) films like: TRIAD THE INSIDE STORY, ALL ABOUT AH LONG, CITY WAR, THE OCCUPANT, EIGHTH HAPPINESS, WHY ME?, THE FUN THE LUCK AND THE TYCOON, FRACTURED FOLLIES, and others I may be forgetting.

MISMATCHED COUPLES
This is Donnie Yen’s second movie, from 1985, and it’s so wrong in so many ways that it’s absolutely right! A savvy label could have a lot of fun with this one (cough-VS-cough)

When I said it was a "when pigs fly" situation, I was specifically referring to the fact that KDC was known to only be willing to sell the entire catalog in one large deal for a lot of money. It wasn't going to be a studio and I had serious doubts that any boutique was going to have the ability or desire to shell out 7+ figures for 156 movies just to get the rights to the 30 or so that are popular in the west. I hadn't really considered the streaming/theatrical side of the deal.

Hey, I’ve leaned toward that same belief on occasion. An idle office chat a few years ago with a HK’er colleague about certain top-tier titles that happened to be in this package kinda kept my faint hopes up. The subject was just HK movies in general, but some of these ‘big titles’ came up. He lived there in that era, loved the movies, and was aware of their international popularity, but was wondering why they seemed kinda scarce over here when I mentioned having to import the Hong Kong discs all the way from Hong Kong, which I think surprised him more because it was some random white dude doing it than anything. But my mentioning that ‘some real estate company’ was sitting on them prompted his tangent about Hong Kong business methodology (and maybe business methodology in general) that kinda made me realize that the KDC would bend . . . eventually, but it would definitely be on their ‘all or nothing’ terms. I wonder if the fact that the catalog has a fairly large quotient of lesser-known titles turned out to be more of a bargaining chip than many companies realized over the years?

Regardless, I honestly figured a deal would come later than now, so this news was a pleasant surprise.

Like I said, though, I just hope Shout doesn’t cherry-pick those obvious gems and dump the rest on ShoutTV or something. I think a number of smaller boutiques could easily find titles in the haul that would nicely fit their m.o.’s. (Kani, Dekanalog, Film Movement, etc.). If I was running one of those companies, I’d already be firing messages to the Shout honchos like “How much for Titles X, Y, and Z?”

Saw a post today by Frank Djeng on FB confirming that the lesser known titles will indeed be fodder for Shout’s new Hong Kong streaming service, but will also be available for licensing to other boutiques. Pros and cons, I guess, but at least they’ll be available somewhere (and the HK Blu-rays will still be around).

That is great news! I can't seem to find that FB reference. Which FB group did Frank convey this?

It was a reply to a comment on one of his own posts promoting the acquisition.

Looks like Shout got the rights to Time Cop on 4K, not Kino Lorber

Nice, I'll get that one. I picked up Sudden Death recently, and Hard Target before that. I see Kickboxer has a 4K release, but I think maybe Bloodsport would be enough to finish up my Van Damme collection if that were to ever get a 4K release.