for those who haven’t heard this already:
“Lord of the Rings” scenes to debut on AOL
Wednesday September 25 8:36 PM ET
Film studio New Line Cinema, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc., has said it will debut the promotional trailer for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” on sister company AOL in a move to draw traffic to the online service.
The trailer, a compilation of scenes from the upcoming movie, will be available for a 24-hour period beginning at one minute after midnight, EDT, Monday, September 30, New Line said in a statement issued Tuesday.
“Two Towers” is the second movie based on the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novels about an epic struggle between good and evil in the fictional land of Middle-earth that is inhabited by elves, hobbits and wizards.
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The first film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” debuted in theaters last fall and became a major blockbuster, raking in $860 million in global ticket sales to become No. 5 of all time on worldwide box office charts.
In April 2000, New Line previewed film clips from “Fellowhip of the Ring” on the movie’s own Web site, and 1.7 million downloads were logged in the first 24 hours.
AOL’s other moviemaking unit, Warner Bros., used a similar strategy with upcoming film, “Harry Potter ( news – web sites) and the Chamber of Secrets,” when it aired scenes from the movie during the Sept. debut of TV show “Family Affair” on the WB television network, which too is an AOL unit.
The new “Harry Potter” is the follow-up to last fall’s other smash hit movie, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” which hit No. 2 on the all-time worldwide box office charts with $965 million. “Titanic” is No. 1 with $1.8 billion.
Reuters/Variety