'Hunt For Gollum' Short on YouTube Survives New Peter Jackson Movie Announcement (cnn.com) 12
Thursday CNN reported:
The Oscar-winning team behind the nearly $6 billion blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" trilogies is reuniting to produce two new films. The first of the new projects from Sir Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens is tentatively titled "Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum," Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday. It will be directed by "LOTR" alum Andy Serkis.
But "amid the news," TMZ reports, "a famous short film about it got yanked ... only to be revived on YouTube a day later." A viral short film called "The Hunt for Gollum" — which got uploaded to YouTube about 15 years ago — has been praised among Tolkien fans for years as a stellar piece of fan fiction and art, which while not sanctioned by Warner Bros., still held its own and looked damn good. On Thursday, WB announced they were making a brand new installment to their film franchise with the same title — which led to the short being taken down on a copyright claim ... but it seems Warner has backed off, 'cause about 12 hours or so later, it's up again...!
Sources with direct knowledge tell us the copyright claim got applied in error ... and the studio realized that, so they removed it and YouTube did their thing. The director of the short, Chris Bouchard, uploaded an email he got from YT saying the copyright claim had been released ... confirming WB retreated all on their own. He tells TMZ ... "We're just happy to hear folks remembered our film somewhat fondly, low-fi effort that it is. And grateful as of course fan films are in strange legal territory."
But "amid the news," TMZ reports, "a famous short film about it got yanked ... only to be revived on YouTube a day later." A viral short film called "The Hunt for Gollum" — which got uploaded to YouTube about 15 years ago — has been praised among Tolkien fans for years as a stellar piece of fan fiction and art, which while not sanctioned by Warner Bros., still held its own and looked damn good. On Thursday, WB announced they were making a brand new installment to their film franchise with the same title — which led to the short being taken down on a copyright claim ... but it seems Warner has backed off, 'cause about 12 hours or so later, it's up again...!
Sources with direct knowledge tell us the copyright claim got applied in error ... and the studio realized that, so they removed it and YouTube did their thing. The director of the short, Chris Bouchard, uploaded an email he got from YT saying the copyright claim had been released ... confirming WB retreated all on their own. He tells TMZ ... "We're just happy to hear folks remembered our film somewhat fondly, low-fi effort that it is. And grateful as of course fan films are in strange legal territory."
fan films are in strange legal territory (Score:5, Insightful)
... only because we let movie studios like Disney and WB extend copyright terms to absurdly long periods. Lord of the Rings is 70 years old and Tolkien has been dead for over 50 years. It should be fair game at this point to make fan fiction about it.
Re: fan films are in strange legal territory (Score:2)
Disney doesn't get involved for another century.
Not content with crapping on Tolkien's works ... (Score:1)
Disclaimer: I walked out of "Fellowship" on opening day in disgust and have refused to see any of the other movies since then (though I have seen a lot of clips here and there). I'm in good company with Christopher Tolkien on this, don't bother exposing your disrespect of a great author by arguing with me.
Re: (Score:2)
Reread the article dude. It was removed in error. Jackson had nothing to do with it.
And the films where fine.
Re: (Score:2)
I sat through it. Then have *not* seen the rest of LotR by him. After he completely screwed up the tale of Aragorn and Arwen, and if he were real, Faramir could sue for libel.
The only partial-Jackson film I liked was "the tolkien edit" that showed up online in '15 of the Hobbit. But then, he edited all the Jackson-auteur-inserted crap *out*.
Re: (Score:2)
At least PJ can point to Rings of Power (starring Annoyed Greta Thunberg) as something even worse--from what I can tell from clips I've seen and some really hilarious commentary about it on Youtube, anyway
So the studio figured it out (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
That is a totally wrong interpretation of copyright law in the United States, which specifically covers derivative works [cornell.edu] (parody, criticism, and other Fair Use provisions notwithstanding).
What it's like. (Score:2)
Th
Public Domain (Score:1)