> Britain doesn't do too badly... We normally get films 2 - 3 months after the Americans do, except in two instances:
>
> 1) It's a British film. British cinema seems to have a better "hit rate" than Hollywood (to my mind), and we almost always get the films first. This rocks, especially with films like "Snatch".
>
> 2) The film dies in the US. Then it never gets a release over here. This leads to some real travesties - I only found out about Mystery Men when it came on TV, and that is a truely brilliant film.

We get the worst of both worlds here. New Zealand gets British AND American films two to four months after they're released overseas. I think it is getting better now. The theatres have been complaining to whoever organises these things, ever since it became possible for the public to buy DVDs of movies that haven't even had a cinema release here yet. Every now and then we get a movie released almost at the same time as overseas; Pearl Harbor was one, and so was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (although it was an independent cinema which picked that one up -- it made it to the big chains much later).

Likewise, many movies only make it to video here. To take two ends of the quality spectrum, both "Battlefield Earth" and "Ghost Dog" went straight to video here and would still be unknown to me if I hadn't heard about them online. Same with "Mystery Men", which I rented on the offchance that it might be funny, and which I *loved*.

Brunnen-"has said this before, but will have to KILL somebody if Lord of the Rings comes out four months late in New Zealand"G