Worldwide simultaneous release looking less simultaneous
Tehanu @ 9:34 pm EST

Hey, but at least it's still worldwide.
I guess when New Line announced the simultaneous release of the 'Fellowship' on December 14 2001 next year, we were overjoyed to imagine we'd share a celebratory Tolkien experience that spanned the globe, a bit like the Millenium did. But we've heard rumours that it won't be quite like that. The most recent 'Herald' article talks about the 'probable first release on Boxing Day' in NZ - that's Dec. 26th, a day which traditionally looks like aliens have kidnapped the entire population of the country. Still, REAL Tolkien fans will stick around for the first screening - but will they spend Christmas day camped out in line in front of the cinemas?

New Zealand's not the only place that'll have to wait (and hey, if the release HAD been on the 14th worldwide, nyah nyah, we would have been ahead of everyone else!) We got this thanks to Jonas:

"I just talked with SF(Swedish Film distrubition) in Sweden where I live, they said that they were showing the films in Sweden and the date of the first film was, world wide, 19/Dec 2001."

New Line's original idea of having a simultaneous worldwidre release may have proved impractical for all sorts of reasons. It's just the cynic in me that thinks they SAID "Worldwide" and MEANT "Worldwide except for funny foreign places with names we can't remember."