Demand For ‘The Hunt For Gollum’ Crashes Servers
Adrian Webster as Aragorn in 'The Hunt for Gollum'
Early this week the amazing not-for-profit Lord of the Rings inspired fan film The Hunt For Gollum was launched online. Before it launched Director and Executive Producer Chris Bouchard didn’t know what to expect and wondered if the film would be very popular. He had his answer within 24 hours after the film had been viewed a whopping 250,000 times causing such demand on the servers streaming the free online movie that they crashed.
Bouchard explained to Sci Fi Wire, “The Web server got completely overwhelmed by all the traffic. We got it back online quite late that night. I think everybody saw the release and went on at the same time. It was the number of requests it couldn’t handle. It’s quite cool! We had no idea how many people would watch it.”
Since its release the overwhelming response has been positive. And so it should be – the film was made with more love than money, by fans rather than investors, for fans rather than customers. In fact, the whole production was completed for only £3000 which is quite unbelievable once you see the movie. Whilst the film runs for only 38 minutes we have no issue in suggesting it is superior in many respects to a lot of big budget mainstream movies.
The Hunt for Gollum is a story that Bouchard adapted from an incident mentioned in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original Rings trilogy. “All the story is in the appendices, and it’s referred to by Gandalf during the first book,” Bouchard said. “That’s a very basic structure of the story, which says Aragorn went to look for Gollum, and he found him, so we filled in the detail.”
As to the film’s positive reception, Bouchard said, “I was shocked, actually, because I was expecting a lot of stick for interpretations. We thought maybe the actors, they’ve got a lot to live up against trying to play [roles played by] Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen. On the whole, the comments from people who’ve watched it so far have been really nice. We’ve definitely had some good nitpicks as well, but we’re quite surprised they’ve been so nice.”
Nitpicks? Honestly, anyone who wants to offer any criticism at all should take a long hard look at themselves. The Hunt for Gollum is a superb short-film and is simply amazing considering the background behind its production. It is a fan film that is every bit deserving of the overwhelming positive response it has received.
If you haven’t seen the film yet you can watch it here or you can visit the Hunt For Gollum Official Website to see it in High Definition.
Source: Sci Fi Wire
