We don't usually do news posts to report exclusively about the region encoding of a BD, but this case the exceptional situation warrants it. The retailer Movietyme has confirmed in its blog that the first two Blu-ray titles in Paramount's Sapphire Series, '
Braveheart' and '
Gladiator', will be locked to region A.
Hence, owners of region-B players shouldn't buy those movies from America, and will have to buy it from local retailers instead. There are some North American etailers that ship titles well ahead of release date, so it was important to inform you as soon as possible in case you need to cancel your orders.
This is highly unusual for Paramount, which never region-locks its new releases, let alone its catalog titles. It might be related to the fact that other studios than Paramount hold the rights to the movies in Europe, where 'Braveheart' is managed by Fox and 'Gladiator' by Universal.