Arrow Video and Arrow Academy – Future Plans

With the launch of Arrow Academy in North America last month, and the recent release of We Are the Flesh in the UK, Ireland, USA and Canada on Arrow Video, it’s proving to be something of a new era for our labels, so we thought we’d bring you up to speed on some of our exciting plans.

For the last few years we’ve been growing both these labels and expanding our teams to bring you ever more great classic films, many of which have been newly restored with optimal video and sound, plus newly created content and books, and we don’t want to ever stop, or be limited.

As a result, we have been gradually widening our scope in this new era to include the occasional cherry-picked new film, such as We Are the Flesh on Arrow Video, and Hard to be a God and Cosmos on Arrow Academy.

Looking ahead at upcoming new films for our labels, we have Amat Escalante’s delirious festival gem The Untamed, Kleber Mendonca Filho’s beautiful Aquarius (which features one of the performances of the year from Sonia Braga) and, to Arrow Video later this summer, Ben Young’s intense debut Hounds of Love which received great acclaim from its UK festival screenings at Frightfest Glasgow and Dublin International Film Festival in February.

Later in the year, we are also proud to present a home-grown thriller from Gareth Tunley, The Ghoul, which includes Ben Wheatley as one of the executive producers. Tunley, along with Alice Lowe (who also co-stars in The Ghoul) represent an exciting new wave of British talent which we can’t wait for you to discover.

We believe these films are too good not to get the deluxe treatment and we will only be bringing the very best new films to these labels. Arrow Academy represents the finest filmmaking from around the world, and we are delighted to be broadening our slate to include these wonderful new masterworks. In terms of Arrow Video, we certainly believe the films we have lined up so far have a cult quality to them (we’ll let you debate that with us), as we like to pride ourselves on finding fresh and exciting films which are bold and visionary, make us think differently and spark debate.

But this new era will not stop with new films, we have been quietly beavering away on other things that we think you’ll like...

Later this month will see the launch of a new range of books at Arrow! Our first books focus on a couple of hugely influential cult films and the works of one incredibly endearing cult icon, as Tom Mes essays the career of Meiko Kaji, Russ Gom looks back on The Blair Witch Project whilst Andrew Osmond digs into the original Ghost in the Shell.

Just like our DVDs and Blu-rays they will feature brand new cover artwork and will be the same size as Blu-ray cases so they can stack right alongside your Arrow collection.

Vinyl however we can’t really change the size of…

Yes vinyl! Remastered, and featuring new artwork and liner notes, our vinyl releases will encompass all the values we bring to our DVD and Blu-ray releases. Following the recent Pieces translucent red vinyl with the Deluxe boxset, we will be releasing more soundtracks from films in our catalogue, including Roberto Nicolosi’s score for Black Sunday and Stelvio Cipriani’s Death Walks on High Heels, plus some films that are yet to be announced for Arrow Video that we won’t spoil for the moment…

With Brain Damage also recently announced as featuring a label-exclusive pin badge, we are looking at more ways in which we can bring you even more quality items, including more pins, posters, t-shirts and more, but we’re only human so please bear with us.

However, we are always open to new thoughts, so if you have any ideas you’d like to share, you can use our suggestion@arrowfilms.co.uk email address to let us know what you’d like to see next, whether that be a poster, book subject, soundtrack idea or anything else...

With books, soundtracks, posters and more you may we wondering if these will replace items in our Arrow Video releases. Well, no - each Arrow Video release will continue just as it is now. Whilst we may now be limiting booklets to first pressings, our research has found that there are many of you who want these booklets and we are looking at ways of making the content available to you through our website after the books have stopped being pressed. We, more than anyone, certainly do not want to see this content disappear!

We hope you enjoy these latest developments, although please rest assured that these won’t detract from the number of films we are bringing you. In fact this new focus is coming at a time at which we are looking to increase our releases! Over the next few months we will start to pick up the pace and we bring you more from each label every month.

If we’re going too fast or just want to let us know anything, or indeed find out about all the latest release info, you can visit our social channels, website and subscribe to our UK and US newsletters.

Our next wave of announcements for UK, US and Canadian July releases, including full information on our first wave of Arrow Books, will take place on Friday April 21 for Arrow Video, and Monday April 24 for Arrow Academy.

Happy collecting!

Team Arrow