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Would be great if Arrow USA could leverage Arrow's relationship with Nikkatsu to release films that wouldn't fly in uncut form in the UK. There are plenty of obvious titles to choose from - the notorious Yasuharu Hasebe films from the 70's are a start.

Just to put those gold list prices into perspective, if you buy every 2014 release from Criterion for 50% off, you will have spent

I was thinking about the success of the Goto campaign and how Arrow indicated that crowdfunding was something they would turn to again. This seems to be a more ambitious replacement to that; instead of having a couple of Kickstarters every year to help get a very expensive or very obscure restoration done, they instead figure to do one big Kickstarter to help expand their market so those restorations are possible regardless of individual funding. Put it that way and backers are really just supporting several future Goto like restorations all at once, which to me is an even more worthwhile investment, especially taken with how much of a bargain the Gold Lists are.

I already have a decent number of Arrow titles from the UK. Would getting a Gold List entail getting duplicates of some of those, or is the Gold List for "new" releases?

rspaight wrote:I already have a decent number of Arrow titles from the UK. Would getting a Gold List entail getting duplicates of some of those, or is the Gold List for "new" releases?

I've been wondering this as well.

Or, if I chose one of the lesser tier options, I'd feel more comfortable if I had the option to choose which upcoming titles I was interested in as I already own quite a few British Arrow releases.

The Gold List is for all future North American releases only (including all alternative editions, so you'll get both the amaray and the steelbook if there is one, for instance*). You won't get any UK discs, either from the back catalog or any that are released in the future that are exclusive to the UK for rights reasons. The only time you'll end up with a crossover is if Arrow select a back catalog title to re-release in the US (though this will be a pretty rare occurrence, since most of their catalog is with other companies in the US at the moment).

*This makes it an even better deal really, since now and again you'll have an alternative edition to sell on, on top of the 5-6 releases you're already getting

rwaits wrote:Or, if I chose one of the lesser tier options, I'd feel more comfortable if I had the option to choose which upcoming titles I was interested in as I already own quite a few British Arrow releases.

Arrow will announce what some of the other next releases will be as the campaign progresses, so it may be best to wait.

I'm editing a trailer for one of them right now! And I'll be hugely disappointed if this one doesn't trigger a lot of excitement, as it's a much-requested title that's never even had a DVD release anywhere in the world, much less a Blu-ray.

Sounds exciting! Hopefully Arrow have a number of tricks up their sleeve over the next two months to get Americans interested. It feels like the majority of their fanbase (i.e. us in the UK) are shut out of some of the more worthwhile pledge levels, which may explain why only 65 people are currently buying into this. If they would offer their future Region B catalog to UK pledgers I think it'd at least give the campaign a much needed boost.

Throwing this $.02 out there, Arrow should extend the campaign until the end of the year so I can give them some of my holiday money.

First update includes a reveal of a very exciting title!

What?!?

OK, I'm in.

One of the questions I have and didn't find answer is if a boxset counts as 1 title or number of films in the set. One of the confusing things I saw in comments is that if a title is released in Steelbook and amray, we will get both edition. So if we get a title released in a boxet and stand-alone release, we also get both?

I believe that's the case yes, you get every version. If we take the Vincent Price films as an example, you would have gotten both the amarays and steelbooks of Usher and Pendulum, then later the full 6 film box set, and then eventually the four other planned amaray releases. Or in the case of the Phibes films, you'd get the two film set, and then later the individual amarays.

Again, potentially lots of brand new spares to sell on to offset that $1,500/2,500!

Will Arrow scrap their plans to move to the U.S. if they don't reach their goal? I certainly hope they can expand to the U.S., and I absolutely will be contributing to this campaign, but $100,000 does seem like an awfully high number to reach.

If they just fill up all of the gold list slots (30 for 3 years, 20 for 10), that takes care of $95,000.

criterion10 wrote:Will Arrow scrap their plans to move to the U.S. if they don't reach their goal? I certainly hope they can expand to the U.S., and I absolutely will be contributing to this campaign, but $100,000 does seem like an awfully high number to reach.

This was answered on Blu-ray.com the other day:

If the campaign doesn't get funded we'll see how the sales of our first batch of titles go (we have enough releases acquired to keep us going for a few months) but it will mean we'll take things slower in the US before we consider increasing our slate or staying at all. If the campaign is a roaring success we'll buy up loads of titles and go full force into the US with a slate as big as our UK slate from roughly summer 2015 onward.

What if it's somewhere in the middle, i.e. just barely getting funded? (Or does "roaring success" cover that scenario?)

If they get less than $100,000, they don't get funded at all as it's Fixed Funding - "all or more" or "nothing".

Right, if they don't get funded, they'll still try out the U.S. market, but more tepidly. And if they get overwhelmingly funded, then within six months or so, they'll be releasing as much in the U.S. as in the UK. But if it's a more modest success with them just barely getting funded, I'm wondering what kind of a release volume to expect.

I think "roaring success" covers $100,000 or more, basically. They address what would happen if they get loads more than $100,000 in the campaign page FAQ, and that includes 4K scans instead of 2K, bigger special features and such, as well as more titles.

Is this strictly the United States, or will these find their way to Canada as well?

On the campaign page they only use the term North America, not the United States, except once:

Since we’ve seen so much great feedback and success in the UK we thought the timing was right to expand into the US and Canada (where rights permit).

With an eighth 10 year Gold List sale the campaign has now passed the 25% watermark. They're only a week in; with a few more exciting announcements I'd say this is a foregone conclusion. Especially since I know many people are waiting towards the end of the campaign to pledge so they have the best idea of what the future titles will be.

Though I'm surprised they've managed to shift so many of the 10 year options but absolutely none of the much safer and cheaper 3 year options.

These things are usually front loaded so while the 25% is reassuring it definitely doesn't guarantee anything yet. An active push on other forums and the like still seems important.

The ten year is a much better value- over three times the movies for a 60% increase in price. Or to put it another way, if we assume there are 40 titles per year, the first $1500 only gives you 120 movies, but the next $1000 gives you 280 movies.

I think if they bumped the 3 year option up to 5 years, it would probably sell a lot better, but as it stands the cheaper option just doesn't seem like a great value.