A series of experiments ͓C. Poulard and A. M. Cazabat, "Spontaneous spreading of nematic liquid crystals," Langmuir 21, 6270 ͑2005͔͒ on spreading droplets of nematic liquid crystal ͑NLC͒ reveals a surprisingly rich variety of behaviors. Small droplets can either be arrested in their spreading, spread stably, destabilize without spreading ͑corrugated surface͒, or spread with a fingering instability and corrugated free surface. In this work, we discuss the problem of NLC drops spreading in a

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... ified two-dimensional ͑2D͒ geometry. The model that we present is based on a long-wavelength approach for NLCs by Ben Amar and Cummings ͓"Fingering instabilities in driven thin nematic films," Phys. Fluids 13, 1160 ͑2001͒; L. J. Cummings, "Evolution of a thin film of nematic liquid crystal with anisotropic surface energy," Eur. J. Appl. Math. 15, 651 ͑2004͔͒. The improvements in the model here permit fully nonlinear time-dependent simulations. These simulations, for the appropriate choice of parameter values, exhibit 2D versions of most of the phenomena mentioned above.