'The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum' - The Fan Film
Image Source: CultureSlate
At the beginning of May 2024, Warner Bros Discovery announced that a new Lord of the Rings film was in development with Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis. The movie supposedly focuses on Gollum, the ring obsessed anti-hero of all four books.
Fans were overjoyed.
Until they heard the title, Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. That’s a little familiar. In 2007, a British director and producer, Chris Bouchard crowd crowd-funded £3000 for a fan project based on Tolkien’s appendices. Although it was definitely unofficial, because of its not-for-profit status, and respect for the material, Chris Bouchard reached an understanding with the Tolkien Estate. However, the film is in the style of the Peter Jackson films. Gandalf, Aragorn, and the Orcs are styled along the lines of the 2001-2003 movies, and the rights for that are held by Warner Bros Discovery.
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In the appendices, Gandalf was worried that Gollum would reveal that Bilbo stole the One Ring, so he sent Aragorn to capture him. Aragorn caught up to Gollum in the Dead Marshes and took him to Thranduil. But he later escaped, when Sauron sacked the city.
The short covers a section of this period, although Aragorn finds Gollum in the woods rather than the marsh. The Hunt for Gollum was filmed in the UK, (Snowdonia, Epping Forest, and Hamstead Heath), and used over 160 volunteers as cast and crew. The film included ambitious special effects and fight scenes. The orcs look amazing despite the minimal make-up and costume budget, and it is accompanied by an orchestral score. What Bouchard and company achieved is astonishing.
On May 9th, 2024, Warner Bros announced the new film would include Andy Serkis and would be titled The Hunt for Gollum. Coincidently on that same day, fans attempting to watch Bouchard’s short on YouTube (and other streaming platforms) received this message:
“This video contains content from Warner Bros. Entertainment, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”
The Hunt for Gollum short had been online for fifteen years and received over 13 million views. Luckily it was only down for 24 hours. A good thing too, as Warner Bros received a roasting over social media in that time.
"These greedy f***s can’t help but hoard every penny, like Smaug. The video already had 13 million views, and was peacefully existing for all these years.”
Warner Bros claim that it was a mistake, that an automated bot took the film down, and they apologised for the error. Warner Bros does own the rights to all the Peter Jackson-based content. The Hunt For Gollum isn’t the only popular fan film out in his style (Born of Hope, The Peril to the Shire, Horn of Gondor, etc), and they remain untouched. This is definitely an issue with the name. Did no one at Warner check that it already had a place in the fandom before assigning it to their new project? Does no one in the office have Google?
The fan film isn’t going to go away. The URL www.thehuntforgollum.com/ is owned by the short, something that could seriously stifle the marketing campaign. But if you look closer, Warner Bros haven’t bothered to buy up any domain names. Most of the Gollum/LOTR-related ones are still free. Disney buys these up way in advance of any release. So, either things are really lax on this production, or Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum was always meant to be a working title.
Either way, Peter Jackson and company have two choices, destroying something beloved by the hardcore fans or changing their title further down the line. One of these is the path of less resistance.
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