Is the next Warner Bros. film, Lord of the Rings, inspired by a YouTube fan film?

Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis plan to tell the story of The Hunt For Gollum, but a YouTube fan film may have beaten them to it. While Warner Bros. announced its latest addition to the Lord of the Rings franchise, it found itself in a rights dispute with an independent project that also uses the title “Hunt for Gollum.”

On May 9, Warner Bros. announced two Lord of the Rings anthology films that will tell standalone stories set in Middle-earth. The Hunt for Gollum, tentatively scheduled for release in 2026, will be the first of these projects. It will feature the involvement of the original Lord of the Rings director (Jackson) and the performer who played Gollum in those films (Serkis).

There’s only one problem with this plan: a movie called The Hunt For Gollum already exists. It arrived 15 years ago, back when fan films were thriving on platforms like YouTube.