The Lord of the Rings NFTs Announced by Warner Bros.
Fans of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring will soon get the chance to buy limited-edition nonfungible tokens (NFTs) of the Peter Jackson epic. Prime Video is currently riding the success of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the new series that follows the Second Age of Middle-earth's history. The show is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is going back to the popular The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring timeframe for a new release on the blockchain.
(Note: More information about the negative ecologic impact of cryptocurrencies and NFTs is included at the bottom of this article.)
According to Variety, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and the blockchain company Eluvio are collaborating for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience. This marks the first time that a movie studio has released one of its films as an NFT, the rather new digital content that has grown in popularity over the last few years. There will be two different editions of the NFTs on sale Friday, October 21st at web3.wb.com, which is a new marketplace going by the name "WB Movieverse." Other WB titles will also soon be available, though Jessica Schell, GM and EVP, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, said those titles will be determined later.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience is minting 999 copies of the Epic Edition and 10,000 of the Mystery Edition. The Epic Edition is priced at $100 each, with the Mystery Edition going for $30. The three-hour and 48-minute 4K UHD extended version of The Lord of the Rings movie is offered in both editions, along with eight hours of special features; hundreds of images; and hidden AR collectibles. The Epic Edition includes navigation menus for three film locations — The Shire, Rivendell, Mines of Moria — along with location-specific key art. The Mystery Edition includes one of them, assigned at random. The Epic Edition also includes extra image galleries not in the Mystery Edition.
"First and foremost, we're always looking at ways to delight and surprise our movie fans and collectors, and that's especially true for The Lord of the Rings," Schell said. "It lets fans experience the movie in a whole new way."
Warner Bros. "can personalize content for each NFT — to make it more of a gameified experience over time," said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio. WB and Eluvio are hyping The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience as a "living movie experience," instead of your run-of-the-mill copy.
(Note: Many critics point to the ecologic toll of NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and other such technologies as having a disastrous effect on the planet and exacerbating climate problems. You can read more about that here)