You'll be forgiven if you were one of those who despaired of ever seeing North American releases of any of the Asian action titles languishing in the Miramax vaults for years thanks to the Weinstein Brothers' 'buy and bury' habits. Sure, some of those titles left Miramax with the brothers and have been arriving on disc via their new Dragon Dynasty label but they left a LOT of other titles behind and the company has been silent on their plans for them. Well, no more. DVD label BCI have just announced they have purchased twenty five of those sought after titles from Miramax, including Ringo Lam's Prison on Fire films, Tiger on Beat, Wing Chun, The Touch and My Wife Is A Gangster. DVDs should start rolling out in early 2009.
I'm not sure about PEKING OPERA BLUES but ZATOICHI'S PILGRIMAGE is not among the 25 titles that BCI acquired. The good news is that BCI is looking to acquire even more Asian action from Miramax so we'll have to wait and see.
Drunken Master 2 and Police Story 3 wouldn't be bad.
DRUNKEN MASTER II is an interesting case; ownership of that film has changed from Golden Harvest to Warner Bros. since Miramax licensed it. There's nothing to be gained if that film heads to WB through a contractual oddity or something.