After announcing Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum as a Peter Jackson-produced movie set for 2026, Warner Bros. has filed a copyright strike against a fan film of the same name despite it being 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 had accrued 13.6 million views on YouTube before it was hauled offline.
Visiting the film's page now comes up with the "video unavailable" screen, however. "This video contains content from Warner Bros. Entertainment, who has blocked it on copyright grounds," the page reads.
The Lord of the Rings fans have therefore been forced to balance excitement for the new film with frustration at Warner Bros. for taking away something from the community too.
"That’s so lame," said Delicious_Series3869 on a Reddit post discussing the takedown. "These greedy f**ks can’t help but hoard every penny, like Smaug. The video already had 13 million views, and was peacefully existing for all these years." IGN has asked Warner Bros. for comment.
The Hunt for Gollum is the first of two new live-action Lord of the Rings films. Announcing the new movie, Warner Bros. CEO and president David Zaslav said the franchise is "largely underused", and his company as "hard at work fixing that."
Adaptations of author J.R.R. Tolkien's original work are coming in hot and heavy across the entire entertainment world. Amazon has continued The Lord of the Rings with its The Rings of Power TV show, Season 1 of which released in 2022 on Prime Video. A second season was announced before Season 1 was even released, and ahead of Season 2's premiere, Season 3 was confirmed too.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an incoming animated film set to tell the story behind the fortress of Helm's Deep and the mighty King of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand. It premieres on December 13, 2024.
Video game adaptations are back in full swing too, despite the disastrous launch of 2023's Gollum. Franchise owner Embracer Group reflected Zaslav's comments by saying it needs to be "exploiting Lord of the Rings in a very significant fashion" by turning it into “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world."
Games in development at the moment include a The Lord of the Rings massively multiplayer online game from Amazon Games, which was in early development as of May 2023, and a cozy life simulator called Tales of the Shire.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
