Update: A few hours after the Hunt For Gollum video was taken off YouTube, the video was restored to the platform. A spokesman for Warner Bros. told i09 that the takedown was a mistake, so it appears, as suggested in our original story, that this may have been an automated takedown. Our original story continues below.
Yesterday’s huge announcement that we will be getting at least two more Lord of the Rings moves from producer Peter Jackson was pretty great news if you're a fan of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. That is, unless you’re such a fan of those movies that 15 years ago you created a fan film centered around Gollum. A short film that has been around longer than Jackson’s Hobbit movies just got pulled from YouTube by Warner Bros.
The fan film was called The Hunt For Gollum and if that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s also the working title of the next Lord of the Rings movie, that Peter Jackson will produce and that Andy Serkis will direct, while also reprising his role as Gollum from the previous Lord of the Rings films. The video has been blocked on “copyright grounds” according to the message that appears when you visit the film’s page now. It had amassed over 13 million views prior to being blocked.
While fan films getting in legal trouble or hit with copyright takedowns certainly isn’t unheard of, when it happens, it usually happens shortly after a film is released. The fact that this one had been sitting quietly for a decade and a half implied that nobody had a problem with it. But then there’s the issue of the title.
It’s possible that, while the copyright strike came from WB, it wasn’t anything active from the studio that took it down. Many strikes of this nature happen automatically from YouTube and so this might have happened because WB now has a copyright on the title The Hunt For Gollum, and anything with that same title got taken down by a bot.
Of course, it’s also possible that the title similarity simply meant that the fan film was brought to the attention of the wrong people at WB for the first time. Despite more than 13 million people having viewed the fan film, maybe WB hadn’t noticed it existed until now.
Copyright strikes can be challenged, but it can be a difficult and drawn-out process. The first question is whether the fan film creators want to bother. It’s possible that especially if this was an automated strike, challenging it could get the film re-listed on YouTube. Since the film pre-dated WB’s use of the title, there’s certainly no argument that the fan film is trying to “cash in” on the new movie in any way.
The Hunt For Gollum is just one of several Lord of the Rings projects on the way. The Lord of The Rings: The War of the Rohirrim release date is set for this December. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is also expected this year. A second film from Peter Jackson is also planned following Gollum, though exactly what this will be is being kept under wraps at this time.
