Update: The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum fan film has appeared back online after Warner Bros. issued a copyright strike against the 15 year old video a day after announcing a film of the same name.
Available to watch on YouTube again, The Hunt for Gollum was initially removed because it "[contained] content from Warner Bros. Entertainment who [had] blocked it on copyright grounds." But the fan film remained offline for less than 24 hours.
Warner Bros. has yet to issue a statement on the matter, and the video itself contains no reference to the brief takedown.
"It appears the fan movement today (many articles) have helped get the movie reinstated on YouTube," Adrian Webster, who played Aragorn in The Hunt for Gollum fan film, tells IGN in an email. "It's nice to know there's some love out there for what we made."
"We’re happy to see that the film has been reinstated already," Chris Bouchard, who directed The Hunt for Gollum, adds. "Perhaps it was an automated copyright block due to the same title. It’s not quite clear. Anyway, we’re happy it’s back online again just now."
Original Story: 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.
"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.
“
"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.
Prior to the film's takedown, the team behind The Hunt for Gollum was positive about Warner Bros.' upcoming film. In an email with IGN sent before the video was removed from YouTube, Chris Bouchard, the director of the fan film, called it "very exciting news."
"I do think with full CG Gollum, the story has the potential to be a lot broader in scope than we could achieve with Gollum talking in a sack for most of it," Bouchard told us. "After all, we could only manage one full CG shot of Gollum on our budget (the last shot of the short!)."
Adrian Webster, who played Aragorn in the short film, also expressed excitement for the movie in an email to IGN, saying he'd return for the big-screen version "if I thought there was love for me to do it; either from the fanbase or from the team at Warner."
"Perhaps if I'm lucky enough to meet them, that could be the jumping-off point," he said. "After that it's character...where is Aragorn in this moment? How can we workshop that? My personal journey took me away from acting shortly after we made the film; but there are certain things in life you can't say no to. Maybe it's as Tolkien wrote: Not all those who wander are lost."
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.
