Lord Of The Rings Movies Returning To Theaters In China This Week

At least the first two The Lord of the Rings movies are coming back to theaters in China. Warner Bros. confirmed in a post on the Chinese social media app Weibo that The Fellowship of the Ring will premiere in cinemas across the country on April 16, with The Two Towers to follow a week later on April 23.

These movies will be available in their remastered 4K versions. The third and final movie in the trilogy, The Return of the King, doesn't have a release date yet for China.

Deadline pointed out that China's May Day holiday period in early May already has many local films lined up to screen around then, so it seems Warner Bros. is holding Return of the King until later.

Director Peter Jackson appeared in the Weibo announcement video and spoke about how the themes of The Lord of the Rings are particularly resonant today.

"It's been really great having the chance to revisit the Lord Of The Rings trilogy… The central theme of the world in a state of turmoil and the ordinary people, the Hobbits in this case, make a big difference," he said. "It's not a story of heroes or superheroes, it's a story of ordinary people who set out to save their world and through a long series of hardships they ultimately achieve that."

China is a massive market for movies, so Warner Bros. could make a lot of money from the re-releases of The Lord of the Rings. In March, Avatar returned to theatres in the country and made enough money to overtake Avengers: Endgame to reclaim its title of the highest-grossing movie of all time globally.

The Lord of the Rings also recently returned to theaters in America and on 4K IMAX for the first time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Fellowship. As for the wider franchise, Amazon is making a big-budget Lord of the Rings TV show, while there are multiple new games in the works, including one centered around Gollum.