"The Hunt for Gollum"

So, for the past three days I've been listening to talk radio when in the car. For the most part the results have been appalling, but interesting. However, today I just missed a segment on NPR about a new fan-made Tolkien movie that was about to debut on-line this weekend. While I only heard the last thirty seconds or so of the radio story, tonight when I got home I followed up on the link they gave, and it proves to be a plug for "The Hunt for Gollum". I'd first heard about this a few months back, then as time passed with no more word I assumed it'd fallen by the wayside, as so many other ambitious fan projects do.

In the words of one Tolkien scholar at the '83 Marquette Conference, "Wrong, wrong, wrong!"

Here's the link to the NPR [National Public Radio] story, with the embedded links to both the original radio audio track of which I'd heard only the end and also a video trailer for the movie.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103673352

Once the 40-minute film itself is released, I'd advise anyone interested in watching it to do so sooner rather than later, since I can't imagine it'll go without legal challenge (think what Disney's response would be if someone made and posted a forty-minute Micky Mouse film, or Geo. Lucas's reaction if someone wrote, filmed, and released their own STAR WARS movie without bothering to get legal permission).

In any case, we'll soon have a case in point to see whether I was right in my comments a few days ago about the difficulty of writing a new story out of Tolkienian materials. I suspect this film will be to Peter Jackson as Terry Brooks and Dennis McKiernan are to JRRT. We'll soon see.

--JDR