during the scenes shot for Donner she appears slender, whereas in the Lester footage she looks thinner. Before the film's release, Warner Bros. had appealed to the Directors Guild of America to arbitrate the appropriate co-director credit, in which they argued Lester could not be credited unless he shot 40 percent of the film. Although Lester had earlier thought he would not be credited, he approached Donner to see if he wished to be credited as co-director. Donner replied, "I don't share credit". Music Composer John Williams was originally slated to score Superman II in which he was given a screening with Ilya Salkind and Richard Lester. When Salkind left the projection room, Williams and Lester fell into an argument; when Salkind returned, Williams told him that he "could not get along with this man." To take his place, Richard Lester's frequent composer Ken Thorne was selected to score the sequel. Thorne wrote minimal original material and adapted source music, such as Average White Band's "Pick Up the Pieces," which appears both in the restaurant in Idaho and during Clark's second encounter with Rocky in the Alaska diner. The music was performed at the CTS Studios, Wembley, London in the spring of 1980 by a studio session orchestra (rather than the London Symphony Orchestra, which had played for the first film). The soundtrack was released on Warner Bros. Records, with one edition featuring laser-etched "S" designs repeated five times on each side. A complete score was released in 2008, as part of Superman: The Music--1978-1988, an 8-CD box set released by Film Score Monthly, with a limited edition of 6,000 units. As part of Superman's 80th anniversary, La-La Land Records released Thorne's expanded orchestral scores for the second and third film into the expanded archival collection in October 2018. Release During a preview of the finished film, Warner Bros. executives had hoped to maximize its box office returns by releasing the film in every part of the world during their peak movie-going period. The film premiered in Australia on Thursday, December 4, 1980, and opened at the weekend in South Africa, followed by France on December 10 with Christmastime releases in Italy and Spain. The film opened in the United Kingdom and West Germany in Easter 1981. On June 1, 1981, the film premiered at the National Theater in New York City, and received its general release in 1,354 theaters