Obviously no word yet on if this will be Region Locked, but this is exciting news.'

http://www.cult-labs.com/forums/arro...le-royale.html

Yeah, baby! Sign me the hell up!

get the fuck out of here! please be region free!

Hopefully it's Region Free.

It's been a decade since I got this; time for an upgrade. Hopefully, both cuts are included.

If it's region free, I'm there like a knife in the nuts.

Want. Badly.

Arrow's most recent titles have all been region free, correct?

If this is region free, I'm going to be rolling around like a pig in shit.

Man, I hope they release the theatrical cut which imho is far superior than the supposed directors cut. This will give me an opportunity to replace my Tartan NTSC DVD version that someone never returned to me. Now if Criterion will Blu Salo, that guy will be off my shit list.

Negative. Departures is region-locked.

If region-free, I'm there. For either version.

Hell yeah, I'm all over this, too.

if they can finally release a watchable verison of the directors cut, i'm all over it, as the PAL verison had some of the worst motion blurring i've ever seen, as it was an NTSC print converted poorly to PAL

But hey, at least Toei had nothing to do with Depatures so we might be a chance! I just say fuck it, Arrow needs to pull a Tartan, release a version playable in America and quickly discontinue it. I'm quite contempt with my two NTSC R0 copies, but I'd like to move up to 1080p.

I'd prefer the theatrical cut as it's a tighter running film.

Oh, so this is only going to be released outside of the states? Whatever.

There hasn't even been an official release inside the states on DVD/Blu-ray/VHS/whatever up to this point.

I know, I got really excited when I saw this but I guess if I want it I'll have to import it and buy a region free play. Not really something I'm in to.

Any update? This would be a day one purchase for me.

Amazon UK has it listed with a release date of 11/15 and supposedly it contains both cuts of the film.

Oh, man. I'm hoping that the muddy US distribution issues will drive Arrow to release this as a region-free disc.

Sorry to say, but since this isn't out in Japan on BD yet, there is no chance of it being region free... For Japan, in October, they will rerelease Battle Royale in theaters in 3D (! why?).

The theatrical and special versions being included was confirmed by Arrow films, but other extras haven't been confirmed or announced yet.

I hope this is true. I've actually never seen the film, but really want to. The book is one of my all time favorites. Of course, In my head, I envision myself directing a version of it someday so a part of me even wants to avoid seeing the film. That's probably not the best logic.

If this is region-locked it will be the reason why I invest in a multi-region BD player.

Yeah, see it anyway. It's great.

On a similar note, I actually started writing an American adaptation of it at one point. Maybe we should team up. (Then again, that was about 7-8 years ago and at this point I probably lost what little of the script I wrote )

P.S. This might not be the thread for it, but does anyone know the reason why no one has ever licensed it for release in the US?

I think the American studios just weren't offering very good deals in terms of what the original rights holder got out of it, and they were making bank on imports.

However, when I was in high school and it was relatively new, people liked to use its unavailability in the R1 as proof it's "banned" in the US, which obviously is not true.