Don’t forget who wrote the stuff in the first place? Some of it read it before seeing the movie you know..

Please go act nice in a forest with long wavy hair all you want. I won’t tell.

No, dude, you’re more, like, a cheap and boring impostor. Sorry. This film is crap. They’d better had spent the money on something original.

The handful of people who’ve made high-profile fan films comparable to Hunt for Gollum in recent years haven’t helmed a feature for a major studio yet. Sandy Collora, who made Batman: Dead End in 2003, is working on a low-budget, indie sci-fi flick, Hunter Prey. Trey Stokes, who made the Pink Five trilogy, is working on an upcoming web series called Ark. Kevin Rubio, who did Troops, writes cartoons and episodes of The Clone Wars. Shane Felux, who created Star Wars: Revelations, made a web series for Disney called Trenches that’s tied up in the wake of economic downsizing. And so on…

But that said, it’s not wrong for the Gollum guys to want to launch a career out of it. Why not? As for nerd credentials, um, they made what appears to be a pretty good flick about a property for which virtually no serious fan films exist; what else do they really need to prove? And why should it matter? Did anyone question Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider skillz when she did the Lara Croft movies? Of course not; she probably hasn’t played a video game since the Atari 2600 was the height of home entertainment.

One point I do agree with, however, is your comment, “Regardless of any legal victories by those who might want to stop the release of this thing, it only takes one anonymous finger to pull the trigger and fire it around the world in an instant.” Too true. Case in point: In 2007, the company behind Warhammer 40000 forbid a $15,000 German fan film based on the game to be released. A full 15 months later, this past December, the flick, “Damnatus,” appeared on the net as a torrent and has since been downloaded thousands of times. While various rights holders involved with Lord of the Rings have been litigious in the past, their noticeable silence regarding Gollum may signal that they’ve learned their lesson.

All of these aspects–right holders versus fans, the PR consequences of protecting intellectual property, and yeah, the cool stories behind many of the fan films mentioned above–are covered in my book, Homemade Hollywood, which just came out in the US and Europe. For a less intellectual, more “hey, here’s something cool”-oriented read, you may want to check out my daily fan film blog, fancinematoday.com.