The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will be released in the Philippines on January 4, 2002 - Pioneer Films (distributor).

Advance screening will be held on December 21, 2001. Contests through SMS (mobile textmessaging) are being conducted to give out premiere screening tickets. Advance screening for LOTR:FOTR here is on December 21, 2001. (And I won two premiere tickets, YES!)(I literally jumped for joy after I won)

The contest procedure is simple, Globe subscribers (cellphone company) must forward "LOTR" to a number on cue when a DJ in 99.5 RT (local radio station) annouces contest and wait for a reply about LOTR Trivia. Once received, one must call the radio station and read the trivia on the air. Here are samples of the LOTR trivias being given out through SMS:
(1) LOTR has inspired many of the greatest moviemakers, for example George Lucas has cited it as a major influence for his Star Wars trilogy.
(2) In a story forecating next years Oscar contenders, the Los Angeles Times posted LOTR with 18-1 odds of walking off with Best Picture.

LOTR merchandise have already arrived here, some of which are:
(1) The Trilogy Books: The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowhip of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. These are paper backs from Del Ray
with movie tie-in covers. It arrived last November 2001. It has been in our top 10 bestsellers for that month.
(2) Action Toy Figures from Toy Biz have limited distribution already in some department stores.

But I am still waiting for other merchandise to arrive like:
(1) LOTR OST
(2) The Official Movie Guide
(3) Visual Companion

LOTR:FOTR posters have been on display in some of our bigger theaters since October 2001.