Toei wouldn't sell the rights to distribute the Battle Royale movies. Due to the natureof themovies, this has led to long-standing but false rumors that the movies were banned from American release. (That they've have been released in the UK, a country with intermittently squeamish Media Watchdogs, should put the lie to that rumour.)
Toei do offer to sell the rights to the United States, but the problem is that their conditions for sale are wildly unreasonable for a subtitled foreign film in the American market: they demand a national cinema release and accompanying advertising campaign on par with the latest Hollywood blockbusters instead of the normal "select arthouse cinemas" route that does decent business for other subtitled foreign films.
The real problem is the MPAA. Teenage slasher movies are nothing new, but there's a difference between a psychotic monster going on a rampage and the nation's government forcing a high school class (played by actual teenaged actors — no Dawson Casting here!) to become murderers. There is no way in hell a film with that kind of content would get anything other than an NC-17 without getting bowdlerised, meaning you can forget about a wide release or big marketing campaign. That's not even considering the inevitable protests that would erupt with even a small-scale release. Too much pain for too little money; I can't see anyone ever taking a chance on this.
To get around that, someone has the rights to make an American remake, along the lines of The Ring and The Grudge. But again, the nature of the story means trying to find 30-40 odd teenagers (or the next best thing), at least five of which you know the studio will want to be "big names", a distributor willing to market a movie like this, and way to make the movie make sense to an American demographic... yeah, let's just say the project's been in Development Limbo for several years.
The DVD was released in March, after a one-week run in Los Angeles back in December 2011.
The full version of Grindhouse, as opposed to the stand-alone versions of Planet Terror and Death Proof, was only released to theaters, cable, and Blu-ray in North America and to DVD in Japan.
A great many old/classic movies from European countries (e.g., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain) have never been released (legitmately) on VHS or DVD in the United States, even when they feature stars who are widely known in America, simply because there's apparently no real money to be made in said release. These movies can include some of these stars' better-known performances.
Case in point: Sara Montiel and Maria Felix. They're generally regarded as among the greatest stars of Spanish-language film, yet most of their best-known movies have never seen DVD release in the U.S. by a major distributor.
In Quebec, some movies are released on DVD without the French language track, even when that language track exist, was included with the theatrical release and is used commonly on TV. One of the most glaring example was Terminator 2, which was recently re-released with a French language track. Even weirder, some movie, like X-Men or Men in Black, have a French-language track, but it's the European dubbing instead of the Quebec dubbing, which is the one used on TV and in theaters.
Inversion: Song of the South hasn't been seen in the United States since its last theatrical release in 1986, though as late as 2001 it was available on VHS in the UK, Europe, and Japan, and VideoVisa released an ultra-rare VHS and Betamax version in Mexico in 1986, which you can get on eBay if you're extremely lucky.
Vacation With Derek, the much-anticipated follow-up movie to the Canadian family series Life With Derek, for no discernible reason, failed to make its scheduled US air date of 10 December 2010. Made all the more jarring by the fact that it premiered on schedule in Australia. It finally made its U.S. premiere, six months later. On Encore.
Inverted with Young Einstein. Still no DVD release in Australia, despite being available in the US since 2005. This is for a film that reviewers frequently describe as being 'too Australian' to appeal to an international audience.
Great White is available everywhere except America due to a lawsuit by Universal that led to an extremely short and abbreviated run in theatres.
Johnny Depp's The Brave. Bad reviews from American critics at the premiere left Depp so depressed that he refuses to allow an American release. The film is available online and internationally though.
Titeuf le Film en 3D was not released in the US. It was released theatrically in the UK, but only at a few select cinemas as part of the 19th annual French Film Festival.
A Clockwork Orange was this in the UK until 2000 due to (depending on the source) either copycat murders or death threats against the family of director Stanley Kubrick. Whatever the reason, Kubrick and Warner Bros. pulled the film from the UK voluntarily, and it wasn't until after Kubrick died that Warner allowed a British release of the film. It was this trope that shut down the Scala Film Club for several years starting in 1993; Warner successfully sued them for screening the film without their authorization.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won't be released in India at least for the time being due to director David Fincher not allowing Sony to cut material from the film that would be deemed offensive to the local censorship boards; if and when it finally does get released there, it'll be Direct-to-Video at best, like The Human Centipede II was in the UK due to its horrific content.
Hoodwinked Too never got released in the UK in any form.
Emma Roberts has had the misfortune of going to Britain to shoot two movies - Wild Child and 4.3.2.1 - which never got American theatrical release; the former went Direct To DVD, and the latter was such a flop in Britain (both with critics and audiences) that it'll be lucky to go direct to television.
