'Hunt For Gollum' Short on YouTube Survives New Peter Jackson Movie Announcement

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."

fan films are in strange legal territory

[kaldari]

... 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

[dpille]

Keep in mind, though, for the 2009-era work to be in the clear, you'd have to cut the quantifiable portion of the copyright term in half. This would potentially be a shorter term than available under the 1831 Act, even.

Disney doesn't get involved for another century.

Not content with crapping on Tolkien's works ...

[ihadafivedigituid]

... Peter Jackson has to take a dump on fan works too. How typical.

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. :-P

Re:

[sg_oneill]

Reread the article dude. It was removed in error. Jackson had nothing to do with it.

And the films where fine.

Re:

[whitroth]

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:

[ihadafivedigituid]

Interesting, I hadn't heard of this edit. Maybe I can track it down. Thanks for mentioning it.

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

[localroger]

The only surprising thing here is that the studio did figure it out. It probably took twelve hours for one of the lawyers who knew what a shitstorm of trouble they were about to get in to find the right executive and convince them to back off. There is no copyrighted work to infringe here, except -- I am not making this up -- the fan video. There is no Tolkien story to infringe whether you own a blanket rights package to his works or not. You cannot copyright a name like "Gollum" or an idea like "let's tell a story about looking for Gollum after the trilogy." You can only copyright the expression of an idea, that is an actual, completed story. Tolkien never wrote such a story, and neither has the studio. Guess who has? The fan video guy. He doesn't even have to have registered it. In the US copyright issues upon creation of the work. Registration just gives you the right to countersue for punitive as well as actual damages. The studio was setting itself up for a massive, embarrassing loss if it pursued this even one more millimeter. It's a stark reminder that these multimillion dollar corporations do not, in fact, own everything (at least not yet). And that is exactly the sort of reminder those corporations probably do not want to drag out in front of a bunch of TV cameras, ever.

Re:

[tiltowait]

> You cannot copyright a name like "Gollum" or an idea like "let's tell a story about looking for Gollum after the trilogy."

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.

[mrthoughtful]

So let's say your Dad, or Mum, or grandparent wrote a book which became really popular, and sold millions of copies, and it includes characters or even races that make it into popular imagination. If you join an agency, they will help monetise the brand for a hundred years or so. You and the rest of your family see a fair trickle of income from t-shirts, cups, plates, badges, the occasional museum exhibit. If it's made into a TV series, (or remade) you get a cut from them while they are still around.
Th

Public Domain

[Farley1]

It's a shame the Lord of the Rings books won't enter public domain until the 2040s-2050s. Until then, the movie studios will squeeze the life out of them.