Arrow Films acquires Hong Kong classics from Shout Factory for the UK market

[Jackie Scanlon]

Originally Posted by Broomey

I want them all but I really do wish at least half of them would get bundled into sets so we're not paying at least £20 for each film.

Assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, every single one of the titles does get a physical release, there is absolutely no way the comedies and romantic dramas that have never previously been released here won't get bundled up. The comedies (stressing again the ones that previously never got a release here - they would typically be comedies that relied more on dialogue than physical humour) particularly will be extremely hard sells as individual releases because they just don't travel outside of that part of the world, because there's so much localised language and humour which is impossible to translate into English. I can't remember if it was Bey Logan, Mike Leeder or Rick Baker who said it would be like trying to sell Reeves & Mortimer to the far East, and they don't even travel well to other English speaking countries. Mind you, there doesn't appear to be as many gambling comedies (another HK sub-genre which doesn't travel because of so much localism in the material) as I was expecting, so there's that. But many of the also-ran romantic dramas are super schmaltzy and sentimental soft-focus films which are like feature length soap opera episodes and will also be hard to justify as individual releases.

I'd be surprised if most or all of the action films didn't get releases one way or another (I'm quietly hoping that Gunmen - a film which most people think is average at best, but one that I've long had a soft spot for since I saw it in the cinema in the early-mid 90s - will get a physical release in some form), the horrors and comedy-horrors will almost certainly get proper releases as they've always been popular sellers right back to the days of VHS, and the upper-tier dramas like The Day On The Beach and All About Ah Long will get releases too I imagine because they were the beginning of and fed into the HK new wave, which is obviously such an important part of world cinema. And it wouldn't surprise me if the earlier chaff that John Woo, Ringo Lam, Chow Yun Fat and Johnnie To did (coincidentally mostly comedy) before they all found their groove got releases too purely for their involvement alone. After that it's mostly slim pickings and I doubt we'd be missing too much if the rest were digital only or sold on to another label to deal with.


It'll be interesting to see if Shout and Arrow physically and/or individually release films the other label doesn't for whatever reason. I don't think US and UK tastes are that different when it comes to HK cinema, but the labels might have different views on the product they have.