Warner Bros. Closes Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum Fan Film, 15, After New Film Revealed
After announcing The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum as a Peter Jackson-produced film scheduled for 2026, Warner Bros. filed a copyright strike against a fan film of the same name even though it has been live on YouTube for 15 years.
The Hunt for Gollum was announced yesterday, May 9, 2024, as a new Lord of the Rings film starring and directed by original Gollum actor Andy Serkis. But the name itself was familiar to longtime fans of the franchise who had watched Independent Online Cinema’s 2009 fan film, which racked up 13.6 million views on YouTube before being taken offline.
However, when visiting the movie page, the “video unavailable” screen now appears. “This video contains content from Warner Bros. Entertainment, who has blocked it on copyright grounds,” the page reads.
So Lord of the Rings fans were forced to balance excitement over the new film with frustration at Warner Bros. which also took something away from the community.
“This is so lame,” said Delicious_Series3869 on a Reddit post discussing the removal. “These greedy bastards can’t help but hoard every penny, like Smaug. The video has already been viewed 13 million times and has existed peacefully for all these years.” IGN has requested comment from Warner Bros.
The Hunt for Gollum is the first of two new live-action Lord of the Rings films. In announcing the new film, Warner Bros. CEO and Chairman David Zaslav said the franchise was “vastly underutilized” and that his company was “working hard to fix that.”
Adaptations of author JRR Tolkien’s original work are arriving in droves across the entertainment world. Amazon followed up The Lord of the Rings with its Rings of Power TV show, season 1 of which was released in 2022 on Prime Video. A second season was announced before Season 1 even released, and before Season 2 premiered, Season 3 was also confirmed.
The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim is a new animated film that will tell the story of the fortress of Helm’s Deep and the powerful king of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand. It will premiere on December 13, 2024.
Video game adaptations are also in full swing, despite Gollum’s disastrous launch in 2023. Franchise owner Embracer Group mirrored Zaslav’s comments by saying it needed to “exploit Lord of the Rings in a very meaningful way” by making it “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.”
Games in development currently include a Lord of the Rings massively multiplayer online game from Amazon Games, which was in the early stages of development as of May 2023, and a comfortable life simulator called Tales of the Shire.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance journalist for IGN. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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News Source : www.ign.com
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