The digital edition of my comic BINARY SEA on Amazon Kindle, free if you have Kindle Unlimited: a.co/d/9JfoZC0

"We loves the idea of a Gollum movie." "NO! WE HATES IT!"

My first reaction to seeing this was like WHY?! No one's asking for this.

If I had a nickel for every questionable Lord of the Rings spinoff title centering exclusively around Gollum that literally nobody asked for, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

1 full page you said??? - Warner bros: that's at LEAST 3 movies!

I recently made the decision to not engage at all with anything that smells even slightly of cynical brand extension. I have not been disappointed by any media products (not art) since.

First the video game, now this. What is it about Gollum that makes people think he's an interesting character in a way that's not covered by the films and books?

I'm guessing someone from WB saw the hunt for gollum short fan film on KZfaq and said "hey we can steal this and make it bad!"

Literally the source material: "There is little need to tell of them." The industry: "Can we make it a trilogy? JRRTCU?"

Not that I really want anymore LOTR (or any franchise really, I'm so tired of it all), but why not make The Scouring of the Shire into a movie? That's a huge chunk of the story that never made it to the screen, and it has a lot going on. Watching Aragorn and Gandalf hunt for baby-snatching Gollum doesn't even sound that interesting, and Andy Serkis is 60, he's probably not even going to do the physical role of Gollum anyway.

I worked in publishing, and your copy (and probably many of them) suffers from printer slippage--the pages, as they are printed and trimmed, can slip and the margins shift. At least it didn't get completely cut off! (Though QC tries to find and toss copies that go that far.)

I'm not convinced we need more LotR that follows directly in Peter Jackson's footsteps. I'd personally like a cartoon that tries to bring back some of the vibe of a more fairy tale imagining of Middle Earth, but maybe that's just me.

Me too. All I want is for Pete and Guillermo to do 4-5 seasons of a dark adult-animated Silmarillion. It's right there... And nobody will do it.

Remember the slop you got served last time? Well, expect even worse slop.

I hope it’s a live action version of the gollum game

Good thoughts. In recent years I have adopted the following philosophy toward new installments in my favorite franchises: "If it's good, I'll watch it. If it's bad I'll ignore it." Which is why I haven't watched Rings of Power. I don't even know if it's bad, but enough people seem to think so that I decided "I'll just reread the books instead. Those never disappoint."

The fan film was great. But I would rather Peter Jackson get the crew back together for a Scouring of the Shire movie.

I cannot think of a single piece of media where dragging a side character into main status for the sequal was a good idea. Especially not a minor character. I will never understand the studio obsession with Gollum. They treat him like a different generation's Minion(s).

*sees title and is out of the loop in LOTR* Me: A new…WHAT?

Andy Serkis: 😏 Peter Jackson: 😏 David Zazlav: 😒

Just repeating my mantra of "They can't change my books or movies that I have" and staring in awe at the new mangling of the property

Peter Jackson should skip this one out

They should bring back Guillermo Del Toro

Man, no ip is safe. Take Mufasa, a live action sequel, to another live action remake of a cartoon, they will milk anything that made money at some point.

All ideas we wanted but will never get due to Evil: Creation of Ea and the Valar establishing themselves The story of Beren and Luthien Story of Turin Turambar The fall of Gondolin The story of Feanor The Silmarils Etc.......

I can almost guarantee that Jackson and Serkis don't want to do this. But they know that if they don't do it, it'll be given to someone else and then it would be even worse.

Fully agree. If they "had" to do a movie tie-in, I think they would have been much better served doing a "Thorongil" story (ie: when Aragorn served both Rohan and Gondor while in disguise). He's young enough at that point that a recast is completely justified and honestly the only characters that could need the original cast would be Elrond, Arwen, Galadriel, and Gandalf (and not of them are critical to telling it properly).

The problem with the Hobbit movies was that they tried to make three epic films from one book, and strayed so far from the source material I had no idea what movie I was watching. If they had just made one movie, maybe they could have made something decent. Now they're going to try to make an epic film from a couple of paragraphs. I have a bad feeling about this.

I'm very sceptic after the Hobbit movies, they are rushing this and it sounds like they are just milking an IP to me.

Why is Hollywood like that crazy girlfriend/boyfriend you dated in high school. At first the relationship is simply amazing. But then as time wears on and the proverbial shoe drops you realize just how much the flaws start to show through. And no matter how you phrase it it's always your fault?

I more look forward to the upcoming animated Hobbit/LotR film War of the Rohirrim.

Hey, printer here... There could have been a pagenation error, in which the bleeds are wrong, because they are set up in reverse. The outside edges and the bind edge have different bleed margins, and if you mix them up you get all kinds of wonky errors; text on the edge of the page, text going into the seam of the spine, and even pages coming out of order (though that big of an error rarely gets to market)

You raised the most important aspect of this to me. How do you even tell an interesting story, where the characters go through a development arc, when the whole thing is basically a filler episode to LOTR? The fan-film is 40 minutes long and even with that runtime it happens almost nothing. I'm betting it's going to be just an action movie set on Middle-Earth, with Aragorn killing Orcs and Gollum escaping Mordor.

It'd be kind of hilarious if Stuart Townsend was cast as Aragorn for this

Man I'd give anything to see Viggo play Old Man Aragorn

"There is little need to tell of them."

On the other hand, I would be first in line if Jackson and Serkis went back to the Bad Taste/Braindead/Meet the Feebles era and just made a really gnarly, bloody Gollum movie (IIRC, he does steal babies to eat at one point).

The should do a movie about Tom Bombadil.

_Mr. Tolkien, can you sign my copy of Middle Earth Babies?_ _Which one of the babies is your favorite?!_

I totally understand your worries. It's great to have Peter Jackson back, even though only in a producer capacity. But, something I either missed or you failed to mention in this video, is that both Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh are also returning which gives me at least a slither of hope that it could be something good.

Couldn’t they do a Beren and Luthien film? That would be way more interesting.

Congrats on the publication of your comic man! Big stuff!

I’m way more interested in “The War for Rohirrim” honestly. Takes place in a new timeline with hopefully a cool animation style, and there’s way more story to tell than “actor who isn’t Viggo finds Gollum, asks him stuff, then Gollum escapes.”

I worked at a print shop. The page you noticed was cut incorrectly. Multiple pages are printed on huge pieces of paper, and cut down to size with a guillotine-like machine. There are guiding lines for cutting that leave room for the margins, but the person operating the machine wasn’t paying attention or it slipped. It was either not noticed or deemed not too damaged to sell.

I mean they have the guy who plays Gollum returning and directing. Not saying this movie will be a masterpiece, but you can't say they didn't pick someone who doesn’t get the character.

They could have made a movie about any other character and it would have better a better idea than a Gollum film.

6:46 that was moreso because he didn't like the idea of the hobbit movies shoving Aragorn into the hobbit story when he wasn't a part of it originally. He was a big fan of these stories so I imagine the only way he'd agree to doing more LoTR films is if they use his character well and serve as a good addition to the franchise. Honestly I'm kinda baffled how companies refuse to just make their own sequels and instead grasp at straws for prequel or midquel content they didn't adapt yet. I figured it'd be easier to bring on people who have an affinity for these series to write their own stories rather than forcibly stretch more and more small chunks of these narratives into full length films.

The era of good movies are over. Everything they do today fails.

I'm glad we're getting the War of Rohirrim movie too at least...

I'm happy someone beside Jackson is finally directing a LOTR movie. Especially after how the Hobbit turned out. I know a lot of people thought Andy Serkis' Jungle Book movie went too far but that's honestly what I liked about it. I'm cautiously stoked. Although I really think they could've chose a hundred better things to make it about.

The disconnect is that fans of the OG films who are older now, want to revisit that particular feeling and era of their lives, the studio wants to revisit the income it originally bought, the creators want to revisit the former reverence people had for them when the OG films came out, all parties want different things, and they have a page worth of notes to do it with. It could be an enjoyable film, but it will never EVER be what anyone wants.

Aragorn literally saying; “there is not much to tell”, seems a good indication to keep our expectations low and maybe at best we’ll be able to pleasantly surprised! 😊

"Dude, where's my Gollum?"

I wonder what non canon "check box" character they will have to add to boss Aragorn around during the hunt?

I’m not asking for more LOTR movie, but the animated adaptions of the appendices seems like the way to go to me

had preordered the physical copy of your comic way back in the fall, got it and cant wait for the next issue!

yeah they lost all our confidence after rings of power

My dream cast for the new movie: -Idris Elba as Gandalf -Whoopi Goldberg as Galadriel -Dev Patel as Aragorn -Awkwafina as Arwen -Simone Ashley as Eowyn -RuPaul as Saruman And wait for it... Jada Pinkett Smith as GOLLUM!

Hey dude just wanted to say got BINARY SEA in the other day and read it, LOVED IT! The only negative part...is the agonizing wait for the next issue. Keep up the great work, hermano!✌

The only part of LOTR worth adapting which wasn't done in the trilogy would be The Scouring of the Shire. They could adapt that pretty much straight from the book and it would make a great movie. The only trouble is that the main cast would all need de-aging. It doesn't look great when it's secondary characters, but when it would be the four main cast members for the entire movie, it would be too noticeable unless they improve the technology massively.

Just got my Binary Sea Comic!

Same vibes as the golumn game lol

The Hunt for Gollum was a fan film made in 2009. I am so glad you mentioned that as Newline Cinema almost blotted it out from existence.

Andy Serkis also directed that Netflix Jungle Book film, personally I liked it more than Disney's Jon Favreau one. It was more emotional and artistically driven than its counterpart. The Venom franchise has a tone of its own so he was limited to work under the confines of the tone set by the first one. I think he did his best considering the script he was given to work with.

This is what fantasy adaptation fans are getting pushed out of the sausage grinder while there is a perfectly good prime rib of Cosmere sitting right over there, waiting to be sliced into.

Don't worry it's garbage

The lack of source material is actually the best part about this. First take The Bicentennial Man or Predestination, both were expanded greatly from sparse writings and did very well, letting the filmmakers be able to create their own vision changing what was written. More importantly though, we don't have anything to compare it to so we can't get disappointed that it's different, that's often the biggest rub in film adaptations.

Just have Peter Jackson do a trilogy (or 2) on the Silmarillion and be as faithful as possible, it's a no brainer and what fans want more than making up stories in the gaps of what already exists.

At some point they will definitely try to make The New Shadow a reality

I mean Gollum is my favorite Lord of the Rings character, so, having more Andy Serkis as him could be fun

The biggest problem might be wanting to create drama and create this life-death encounters between, say, Aragorn and Orcs, or even Nazgul, and then ask yourself - well why this wasn't in the book then? The same way the insertion of Legolas into Hobbit and making him do crazier stuff than he did in the original trilogy was a horrific choice. Like if Aragorn gets near death a bunch of times in these movies, I'm gonna be seriously pissed. I'm not an optimist, but I do think there's a great movie in there - it's just has to be minimalistic so to speak. Just give us a fun adventure with beautiful photography, get us back to Middle Earth we know and love. Give us top notch production value. And give us A STORY - that's well rounded and makes sense. It doesn't have to be grand in scope at all. Also I think there are a lot of significant moments in that part of Tolkien's history. Aragorn's youth is definitely something Tolkien didn't explore that I think he might have had he lived longer. So there's definitely potential in this whole thing - but I think we have every right to be pessimistic. EDIT - I wrote a comment right before you said a lot of similar stuff in the vid, lol.

hearing Age of Men by Jo Wandrini really caught me off guard, but I’m happy you used it because it’s a beautiful song! I’m a fantasy music nerd lol

Why worry? If it sucks, it sucks. A week ago the idea of the movie didn't even exist, so we didn't actually lose anything if it turns out to be bad. And if it doesn't suck, we've got something more to enjoy. A bonus we didn't think we would have before.

Not sure how much content you have planned down the pipeline but you alluded to discussing the Flanderization of characters in shows like the office in one of your other videos and I would be interested in seeing you make a video like that

Got both covers my guy great work

Honestly you make a lot of great points and I'm cautiously optimistic. Mostly because LOTR has already been run through in my opinion so that perfect image is already shattered. It can't get worse right?

You’re definitely an early 90s baby- if not late 80s. You described my childhood to vividly 😆

There's more source material than what you described, there's also Gollum being abducted initially and sent to Lugburz for interrogation then conspiratorially allowed to leave, which could be interesting because we literally never get to see inside and their plans. There would be far more interactions with orcs in this story. There's also everything he did while he was tailing the Fellowship which is a ton of material in itself. It's not like there isn't a tale there. This story would essentially be a LOTR prequel and sets the stage for Lugburz discovering that the ring is in the Shire with "Baggins"

3:40 how does your book look exactly like mine, creases included!!?? (I do have an older copy that was published back in the 60/70s, but I keep it tucked away safely and never read them. I only read my post-movie versions.)

And I am .... well , not worried . I gave up on movies and tv shows after the last jedi , and now I only watch new animes ,old movies and old cartoon shows. But , Hey ...have fun kids ....

Have you seen any of the Honbit fanedits out there? There are some great 3-in-1 versions out there that adhere to the book.

I had the movie tie-in omnibus, and it was actually missing one line of the ring inscription where Gandalf recites it.

Two things: 1. The recent Dracula movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter basically did the same thing (expanding a tiny part of a book into a whole movie), so it would be interesting to compare that. 2. The appendix says that the hunt for Gollum took eight years and covered a lot of ground. So there's at least dramatic space for a chase movie with lots of events.

Since when is Golum a favorite character? especially out of the context of his journey with Sam and Frodo. Is he gonna have a character arc? is Aragon? What would this film be about?

I feel the same about Fellowship - best film ever. I was 12 when it came out. I’ve come to realize that the fantasy of LOTR was a cope for me after that tragedy in ‘01, and right at the tail end of my childlike imagination. Everything after that felt so disappointing, like an old dear friend who didn’t remember me though I’m still hopeful they will eventually. I’ve since learned to manage my expectations of new Tolkien media realizing that nothing ever can be special to me like those movies (and subsequently the books + extended lore). In my mind is the 2001 Peter Jackson version of the Silmarillion when I read it, and I love it. Fingers crossed for this new movie(s?). Hopefully lessons were learned.

I remember the fan film with this storyline some years ago. It was short and I can't imagine it any longer.

I am excited and optimistic about this new project. I will agree though, I don’t see how they will be able to adapt a half a page into a feature film without running into a hobbit situation. Hopefully they can pull it off.

3:36 love how they put a picture from The Two Towers on the cover of Fellowship of the Ring

As much as I like to own nice editions, I like to see a worn out paperback that only had one owner. That's someone enjoying the hell out of that book!

I prefer a film on the Easterlings of Rhun over a Gollum film. Tolkien barely covered Rhun and Jackson has free room to craft his own story of it. Like it will be interesting to see how many Easterlings, under the guidance of the Blue Wizards, rebelled against their rulers (Sauron’s Easterling monarch and lieutenants). If it weren’t for Rings of Power, the Second Age would be the most interesting storyline to adapt on film.

Peter Jackson came out with an interview where he said that the movie is gonna be focussed around Smeagol/Gollum, not just the hunt. It should tell the story of how he got hold of the ring up to the events of the trillogy

That’s my copy of Fellowship too! Easily the tightest space for a book I’ve ever read- multiple times.😂

I see why they must of seen this as story potential because its vague. aragon says that nothing significant happened. But aragon comes off as a very humble and modest individual that is less on talking about what happened and more focused on that it worked out. And since what you described as most of the details we get of aragons journey is only from gandalfs perspective. as aragon seeks gandalf in mirkwood to somewhat interrogate smeagul (which is a pretty big development). it seems that potentially there might of been alot more to the journey than what aragon is letting on. Im just hoping that they have been speaking to Tolkien lorists and use the books to base their logic for what happens in the story and tie it with "well would that work in the novels?" They really need to be genuinely critical of their story so that it doesnt just come off as fanfiction. 😅

I’m guessing WBD has some unused footage that PJ filmed but never used in the original trilogy. I remember back in 2002-03 wondering how much of the Gollum story we would see in The Two Towers and ROTK. Surprisingly the final release showed very little. But I expect they filmed some of it and never used it.

PJ’s been talking about this for a long time. I remember rumors going as far back as the theatrical release of RotK. It was also once rumored to be the filler material in the Hobbit movies (back when there were only going to be two). For whatever reason, this is his very favorite “untold story” in the books. So, concern is merited, but not surprise or shock. This has been coming for two decades

Growing as a movie lover is transitioning from Return of the King being your favorite movie for its scale of battle to The Fellowship for its world building, character development, arc, etc

I think you're absolutely right. But I also there still are movies that can be made from Lord of The Rings lore. "The War of the Rohirrim" is promising because it's set within that world, but comes from something Tolkien only mentions briefly in an appendix. There's room for a story to be told there. You could say the same for the Tolkien works that were published by Christopher Tolkien after his father's death: "The Silmarillion," "Unfinished Tales," "The History of Middle Earth," and so on. When chosen carefully and adapted with love, there are lots are stories there that could be brought to life. But the hunt for Gollum isn't one of those stories, for reasons you explain very well in your video. It's not meant to be an important part of the saga, with lots of action and significance. It's just a strange and rather dark chore Aragorn had to do once, where he met an important character but nothing of significance happened. There's little room for a story to be told.

Yes! I’ve been waiting for Gollum the video game’s movie adaptation.

HA, your parents did the no TV summer rule as well. Man that was rough, only thing I could watch was movies during designated movie times, with my parents. Almost made me want school to be back so I could watch TV in the afternoons.

I 100% agree with your statement about "The Fellowship of the Ring" being your favorite. I have long thought the same thing.... the masterful arc from humble beginnings, to recognition of duty and danger and a traumatic future ahead, brought back to the simplicity of the final line of two friends amidst it together, with one turning to the other to say plainly "I'm glad you're with me." It's beautiful. I never get why out of the three it has the lowest score (though to be fair, all films are well within the high ranks of 90+%) I think people like the action of "The Two Towers" for that beautiful clash at the end, the battles rising together and the light clashing with darkness with Samwise's voice over telling the moral. But I still can't get past the sheer simplicity of TFOTR...in the end, outside of the "stories" (that Samwise refers to in TTT) most of us at the end of the day, just need a friend to turn to to know we aren't alone. It's the most ...precious... thing on earth and in our human experience. The core message of the whole trilogy - there's never one hero. No hero's journey is ever done alone.