Lord of the Rings premiere - Coming Soon on C4.

I posted a thread a few months back asking which TV station had the rights to the TV premiere of Lord of the Rings - with the answer I got being ITV.


However last night on C4 they screened a promo which implied they would be screening it soon.

The quote - with a close up of a pair of eyes of a non-human looking creature:

"He hates and loves the ring - as he hates and loves himself"

The promo ends with in the standard C4 way - but black instead of white - with just the words "Coming Soon" encircled by a firey ring!


It could very well be for something different, though I doubt it!

EDIT: As you'll see below this has been confirmed. channel4.com has further details.

Channel 4 will be screening the first film at least, though I'm not sure whether they'll be screening the whole trilogy. The official site is below.

Channel 4 Lord Of The Rings Site

Ads every half-hour will suffice.

The website says that The trilogy will get it's television premiere on channel 4 this year. So I reckon they will be showing all three. With reference to the ITV comment....they have bought the rights to show the LOTR but maybe they didn't acquire the premiere rights. They have a deal with Warner Distribution (New Line Cinema is a subsidiary)so maybe they are going to show them once Channel 4 have shown the premieres. That happens on Channel Five sometimes. For instance, they bought the premiere rights to Independance day and showed it in 2000. On Christmas Eve 2000, BBC1 showed it!

That was different, when Channel 5 started it signed a deal with 20th Century Fox and the BBC for a movies package, as C5 couldn't afford it fully, so it meant that they had to share with the BBC, but this deal ended at least 3 or 4 years ago. It explains why 'Mrs Doubtfire' was shown on C5 a week after it launched and later shown on BBC1 sometime the next year, same with Speed and Independence Day.

ITV have bought the rights to a selection of Warner Brothers and New Line movies as well as their back catalogue. That means that Channel 4 will have the rights to LOTR for awhile then it will go to ITV, the same is true for the BBC and Harry Potter. Soon that movie will go to ITV and ITV has also bought the next two in the Potter series. ITV did the same with Universal, that's why even though True Lies was shown on BBC1 a few times, subsequent screenings have been on ITV.

What I don't understand is why, after all these years, are Die Hard and Pretty Woman STILL being shown on ITV and yet other movies have moved to other channels like Who Framed Roger rabbit and Dead Poet's Society?

The Die Hard and Pretty Woman tapes must be on their last legs by now surely!! How many times have they been played?!

It's a load of rubbish,

I seen it at my college on Dvd. My tutor brought all three of them in, I was falling asleep about 30 mins though.

So boring not my type of film
Regards
lee penfold

Well I started this thread more out of an interest in TV than the film itself.

I've seen the first one and didn't reckon much to it - but I also made the mistake of starting to watch it from 1am in the morning.


Any ideas how soon it'll be shown - I'm guessing probably the May Bank Holiday weekend (Sunday 8pm) with the second on the August Bank Holiday and the final edition around Christmas / New Year.

You seem to make sense with your assumptions. You would have thought though, that with all the crap that was on offer at Easter, the first one could have been shown on Easter Day or Easter Monday! still, I think it will appear over the May Day Holiday period!

Well that would make sense, it would be a bit weird if ITV were showing the next two potter films, but didn't have the first one.

I thought that the BBC had the rights to show the film four times over five years. So I wouldn't have thought ITV would show it until at least 2009. Unless of course, ITV have the rights too! Very unlikely though!