drewtos:

[UPDATE] Battle Royale: The Complete Collection will be released on blu-ray in the U.S. on March 20th. This special edition will contain 4 discs featuring the theatrical and director’s cuts of ‘Battle Royale’, the theatrical director’s cut of ‘Battle Royale II’, and a DVD copy of the director’s cut of the first film.

Over 2 hours of special features will be included:

- The Making Of Battle Royale featurette
- Battle Royale press conference
- Instructional video: “Birthday Version”
- Audition/rehearsal footage
- Special effects comparison featurette
- Footage from the 2000 Tokyo International Film Festival
- Battle Royale documentary
- “Basketball Scene” rehearsals
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Filming on-set footage
- Original theatrical trailer
- Special Edition TV spot
- TV spot: “Tarantino Version”

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[The following text was first posted on January 9th, 2012. Click here for the original post.]

For those who are unfamiliar with the now Japenese cult phenomenon, here is a quick description:

With school children all over the country growing increasingly delinquent, the Japanese government takes decisive action and introduces the Battle Royale Act. The Act sets forth a plan whereby a class will be chosen at random and flown to a remote island, where each student will then be given a weapon and set loose to fight their classmates, each student knowing that only one of their number will be allowed to leave the island alive. When Class B of Zentsuji Middle School are chosen to take part in the massacre, the different students quickly take sides against each other, but Shuya and Noriko form an alliance and try to weather it through together. (Blu-ray.com)

Considering ‘Battle Royale’ first came out in 2000, the movie has taken way too long to get a U.S. release. Even so, I am glad U.S. audiences can now appreciate this masterpiece in high definition and with proper subtitles. I had bought a DVD edition off Ebay years back that had decent picture but was translated poorly in some scenes. I’m not sure what took so long for a U.S. release, but my best guess as to why its being released now is because of the similarities it has with the upcoming ‘Hunger Games’ being released in theaters March 23rd, 3 days after the blu-ray release of ‘Battle Royale’.

In addition to the complete collection available March 20th, distributor Anchor Bay will also release a single disc addition of the first film.

(Source: Blu-ray.com)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I HATE BLUE-RAY ;o; But I really need this in my life…