Quoting Squirrel.God:

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If you want to take the first studio for each film as being the Country of Origin, then get ready to justify having different CoOs in different profiles of the same film, depending merely on which locality the DVD is from.

Hold on to your squirrel nuts for a second.    I am not saying to take the first studio for each film.  I am making a talking about a specific film.  Sometimes the first studio is simply the theatrical distributor.  I take each credit on a case by case basis.

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I haven't looked at the onscreen credits for the LOTR films, but all I see is "A WINGNUT FILMS PRODUCTION" in the credits on the back cover. I can't see anywhere where it says "A NEW LINE CINEMA PRODUCTION".

The opening credits say, "New Line Cinema presents A WingNut Films production'.

Take it for what it is worth...it is not really helpful to me as that is standard opening credit text.  It helps, a LOT, to know what the relationship was.

Quoting 8ballMax:

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Quoting sugarjoe:

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Rifter please keep your completely irrelevant political views to yourself.

Thank you.

...this coming from someone with a political statement as his avatar

Quite sad that you are unable to see the difference here...

Hi Rifter,
I don't think you get my point. No one is denying that New Line own the rights to LoTR, and as far as I can tell, no one ever has.
But the point is that we've been told by Gerri that CoO follows the production company, and that means something completely different to rights holder. That's what the problem is, some people don't realise that.
You said yourself that WingNut "were HIRED by New Line to do a job" and that job was to produce the LoTR trilogy, making THEM the production company, not New Line.

Quoting northbloke:

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Hi Unicus69,
this wording means that in this situation New Line are the distributor, as they are "presenting" the film to the public. The "production" credit is given to the company that did the day to day managing and organisation of the film's pre-production, production and post-production, in this case WingNut.
Had New Line actually participated in the actual production side (in more than the expected supervisory role a financer would take), it would have said New Line Cinema presents A WingNuts/New Line production".
I hope that clears things up a bit. I think the problem is with this discussion is a lot of people don't seem to understand the distinction between all the different companies involved in the making of a film.
In this case, although New Line funded and distributed the film, they are not the production company as they did not personally run the day to day management of a production. That's what a production company does. And in this case, it was WingNut's job.

I have a fairly good understanding about how these things work.  I am, after all, a studio buff.  I wouldn't have opened my mouth if I didn't know what I was talking about.  New Line did more than fund and distribute the film.  As I recall, Jackson was constantly 'sleep deprived' because he had to have meeting after meeting with the folks at New Line where they gave approval, or disapproval, on production decisions.

That being said, I am not sure where I stand anymore.  I did some more research...as is my nature...and discovered that New Line did not hire Jackson.  It seems that Jackson and his wife, along with Miramax, obtained the rights for the films back in 1997.  When Jackson and Miramax had a falling out, Miramax sold the entire project to New Line.

So, while I still believe that New Line was part of the production, Jackson was the driving force for these films.  He brought them to Miramax and went with them to New Line.  This new information...well it isn't really new just trivia I had forgotten...has put me back on the fence. 

Sorry Unicus69,
when you said that it helps to know what the relationship was, I thought you were asking!
But you've brought up a good point - without knowing a lot of details about the production of a film, it's going to be near impossible to be able to tell which production company should be credited.

Why don't you just toss a coin to sort out the CoO, that's how irrelevant this field is.

Just going to be one headache after another, and a strange new feature to add as I was never aware of much pressure to have such a field included in feature requests?

Are any users actually passionate about having this CoO in the program? 

Quoting Unicus69:

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Alright, admit it.  Who else is  ?

No worries. Thanks for your research. I've certainly learned a lot about the LOTR series!

Quoting richierich:

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Why don't you just toss a coin to sort out the CoO, that's how irrelevant this field is.

Just going to be one headache after another, and a strange new feature to add as I was never aware of much pressure to have such a field included in feature requests?

Are any users actually passionate about having this CoO in the program? 

Well, I was hoping to use it since the 'foreign' genre got tossed. The foreign genre looks like a children's book compared to this COO monster though. 

Quoting northbloke:

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First chance tomorrow I'm going to submit all the LoTR films I have with a US CoO, with a change to NZ. How many no votes do you think they'll get?

Oh, a lot.

Quoting Unicus69:

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Quoting northbloke:

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The problem with Gerri's post is that the production company for LoTR (WingNut) is based in New Zealand.
So does Gerri think the production company was based in the US or does she class New Line (the funder/distributor) as the production company?
We need clarification on what Invelos think "production company" means. Is it the company that fund the film, make the film or distribute the film?

People seem to think that New Line isn't a production company because it is a movie studio.  I am not sure why that is so let us define a production company.  From Wikepedia:

Production company refers to a company responsible for the development and physical production of performing arts, film, radio or a television program. The company may also be directly responsible for the raising of funding for the production or may do so through an intermediary. The production company may be a small company, selling its product to a film studio or presenting it at a theatrical venue, or, in the case of film and television, it may be the studio itself.

That is the standard definition of a production company.  Both New Line and WingNut fall into this category.  Because both companies fall into that category we have to decide which one takes priority.

New Line was responsible for the development, raising of funding, presenting it at a theatrical venue and it was the studio itself.  WingNut was responsible for the physical production.  In my book, New Line was responsible for more things and took the bigger risk...that is why they are listed first in the credits.

Well said Unicus.  This is exactly on the money (pun intended)!