Warner Bros. Takes Down Gollum Fan Film After Announcing Its Own

Yesterday, Warner Bros. announced a brand-new Lord of the Rings film, focused on Gollum and titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. There’s just one problem — another film already used that name.

Fresh off the announcement that Andy Serkis would return as Gollum in the new Lord of the Rings film, Warner Bros. has issued a copyright strike against a fan film on YouTube, effectively removing the film from view and potentially putting the uploader’s channel at risk. YouTube channels that receive three copyright strikes are usually taken down, so it’s a pretty big deal when it happens.

The Hunt for Gollum is a fan film that was produced between 2007 and 2009, and released in May 2009 by a group of amateur filmmakers. It was just under 40 minutes long, but was viewed by tens of millions of people before it was taken down.

The film featured an all-original story that followed Gandalf and Aragorn on the search for Gollum in an attempt to stop the One Ring from falling into the hands of Sauron. It was largely based on the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, but expanded on significantly as the Appendices are pretty light on detail.

At this stage, we don’t know exactly what Warner Bros. new film is going to be about, but given it used the same name as the 2009 fan film, it’s not particularly surprising that the film giant is being aggressive about it. At the time of writing, the website for the fan film is still up, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Warner Bros. goes after that, too.

Warner Bros.’ Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will be produced by Peter Jackson, who quite famously headed up the Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as its sequel The Hobbit trilogy. Serkis will be directing the film, in addition to starring as the eponymous Gollum, reprising his role from the original trilogy and the first Hobbit film.

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