Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Image / New Line Cinema
In 2009, Chris Bouchard, a recent film school graduate, uploaded his 39-minute Lord of the Rings fan film, The Hunt for Gollum, to YouTube. At the time, the platform was still, in his words, full of “five-minute videos of people’s cats”.
The site promoted Bouchard’s movie on its homepage, and within 24 hours, he had more than 1 million views. Today more than 13 million have watched the film, cementing it as a fan favourite.
So it came as a surprise recently when Bouchard received a text from an old friend saying that Warner Bros. had announced a planned addition to its growing Lord of the Rings franchise. The name of the movie? The Hunt for Gollum.
The studio feature is slated for 2026, and the producers will include Peter Jackson — who directed the 2001-03 trilogy based on the fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien — and his longtime creative partners Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh. Andy Serkis will direct, and will reprise his role from the earlier movies as the mischievous titular creature.
After getting the text, “at first I thought he was pulling my leg”, Bouchard said of his friend. Soon, online articles were embedding the fan film in their coverage of the Warner Bros. announcement, leading younger fans to it for the first time while older ones relived its lo-fi magic.
But by the next morning, Bouchard’s 15-year-old work had disappeared from YouTube. Viewers clicking on the link were shown a message stating, “This video contains content from Warner Bros. Entertainment, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”
The removal “was an ‘uh-oh’ moment for the fan base,” Michael Regina, a founder of the popular fan site TheOneRing.net, said in an email. Shortly after the takedown, Bouchard appealed YouTube’s decision and explained his movie’s status as a non-commercial film.
Early on, he had reached an agreement with the Tolkien estate ensuring that his project would respect its intellectual property, and that it would be freely available and non-commercial. “We were lucky that they looked kindly on it as something that was for the fan community,” Bouchard said.
But YouTube denied the appeal. So, like eagles over Mordor, the Ringers, as the fans are known, swooped in. They wrote articles and posted heated comments on Reddit and other sites, calling the removal “deplorable” and “despicable”. Bouchard noted his disappointment on the social platform X.
Bouchard quickly received a follow-up email from YouTube: the movie had been reinstated. In an email, Warner Bros. said it had no official comment. YouTube did not reply to requests for comment.
Bouchard’s film is not your run-of-the-mill fan project. While it had a low budget — just £3000 — he used advanced visual effects technology for the time and created orc getups and a backdrop of Welsh ruins. At certain angles, Adrian Webster, the actor who plays Aragorn, even strikingly resembles Viggo Mortensen, who played the character in the studio films.
Inspired by behind-the-scenes shorts that accompanied the Lord of the Rings DVDs, Bouchard drew on a few short passages from The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume in the trilogy, as well as appendices. Seventeen years after Bilbo Baggins’ infamous, fireworks-filled birthday party in the Shire, the wizard Gandalf sends Strider (later known as Aragorn) to capture Gollum — a hobbit turned corrupted troglodyte — before the evil lord Sauron can glean from him the location of the all-powerful One Ring.
“We wanted to explore the artistry and play in that same universe of Middle-earth,” Bouchard explained.
Bouchard “was one of the pioneers in generating the sidequel”, a work that’s akin to a spinoff, Regina said, and he expanded the source material in ways that studios like Amazon have only more recently begun to explore. “It was the ultimate fan accomplishment.”
Now working as a virtual-effects professional and indie film director, Bouchard developed The Hunt for Gollum as a creative outlet while working his first job, as an assistant at a post-production company in London.
“I’ve always had a deep love for Tolkien’s work,” he said. “The depths of the world-building, the language, the poetry, the characters.”
He wrangled a core group of about 30 volunteers — including friends who were actors but also some professionals, along with makeup artists, hairstylists, sound engineers, costume designers and effects specialists — and around 50 digital artists and 50 extras. Trained combat performers played the orcs. “They had quite a lot of fun larking about in the woods between takes,” Bouchard said, laughing.
Together, they spent around 10 weekends in the forests and mountains of northern Wales and nine months editing and adding effects.
“I loved the process of adapting an enormous work and finding the right ways to express characters from the page,” Bouchard said.
The movie was invited to film festivals in London, comic-cons and events put on by the Tolkien Society, a literary group dedicated to studying the author’s work. And it was the subject of blog posts, fan sites and discussion forums. One academic even dissected it.
“At the time, there wasn’t much out there for the Tolkien community,” Bouchard said. Six years had passed since the release of Return of the King, and the first movie of the Hobbit trilogy wouldn’t arrive in theatres for another three.
Other fan films from that era explored different aspects of Tolkien’s Middle-earth work, which extends far beyond the well-known trilogy. Kate Madison, a friend of Bouchard’s, directed Born of Hope, which has been viewed 80 million times and follows Aragorn’s parents.
After 15 years, Bouchard said he never expected a resurgence of interest in his “rough around the edges” indie film. “It brought back lots of lovely memories from that whole adventure,” he said.
The team — now spread throughout Britain and other countries — has spoken of a reunion for years. “We’re going to make it happen this summer,” he said.
As for the coming Warner Bros. film, Bouchard expects some of the same plot turns, with one glaring difference: “They probably won’t have quite as many budget restrictions.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Stefano Montali
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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