Warner Bros. is Launching NFTs For THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Warner Bros. Discovery is taking Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and launching limited-edition NFT versions of the incredible fantasy epic. NFTs are becoming very popular and this is the first time a major studio is releasing a movie as NFTs,
WB is partnering with the blockchain company Eluvio and they will launch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience, which will be available in two different editions that drop Friday, October 21th at web3.wb.com. On this platform, fans will be able to buy, sell and trade movie NFTs.
This is just the first of more NTFs to come that will be available in the “WB Movieverse”. This is a whole new marketplace that WB is looking to tap into and Jessica Schell, GM and EVP, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, said that future releases are yet to be determined.
WB and Eluvio are minting 999 copies of the Epic Edition, priced at $100 each, and 10,000 of the Mystery Edition for $30. “Both allow buyers to watch the extended version of the film (which clocks in at 3 hours and 48 minutes) in 4K UHD, along with access to more than 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.”
Schell said: “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. It lets fans experience the movie in a whole new way.”
Schell went on to say that the 2001 fantasy film is an “evergreen” film with a passionate fanbase. While the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring has been available in previous WB Home Entertainment releases and has eight hours of bonus content. It;’s also avilable to watch on HBO Max. In the NFTs, “that’s all packaged up in one experience, along with the new AR collectible items (e.g., a magic wand) hidden throughout the different locations.
So why would someone want to buy one of the NFTs? Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio explains, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience is a “living movie experience, rather than simply a copy of the movie. Warner Bros. can personalize content for each NFT — to make it more of a gameified experience over time.”
When talking about why WB decided on the number of NFTs to be minted for this release, Schell explained, “It’s that balance between wanting it to be available to fans, and also wanting to have some level of scarcity and exclusivity.”
If you want to get in on this, users must create an Eluvio media wallet that acts as a digital vault and lets consumers stream and purchase content. The Fellowship of the Ring NFTs can be purchased via credit cards or cryptocurrency wallets.
Eluvio’s Content Blockchain allows for Web3 native media experiences, and the company claims it provides a “significantly more carbon-efficient alternative” to other platforms for digital asset management and NFT minting. With the Lord of the Rings release, the core digital assets of the experience along with derivative NFTs are all on the blockchain, not just the token (NFT) itself. That means smart contracts and content experiences can be dynamically updated over time.
