Fans of Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” will be able to buy limited-edition multimedia nonfungible token (NFT) editions of the fantasy epic.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is working with blockchain company Eluvio to release “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience on Friday, October 21 at web3.wb.com in two different versions. It’s the first time a major studio has used NFTs, which are unique identifiers that prove who owns digital content, to release a movie.
NFTs for “The Fellowship of the Ring” are the first to be made available in “WB Movieverse,” a new marketplace that will eventually have more titles from the studio. Jessica Schell, who is the General Manager and Executive Vice President of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, said that future releases have not yet been decided. On the platform, fans will be able to buy, sell, and trade movie NFTs.
The $100 Epic Edition will only be made in 999 copies, while the $30 Mystery Edition will be made in 10,000 copies. Both versions let buyers watch the 3-hour-and-48-minute extended version of the movie in 4K UHD and get access to more than eight hours of special features, hundreds of images, and hidden augmented reality collectibles. The Epic Edition has menus and key art for The Shire, Rivendell, and the Mines of Moria, which are all places from the movies. Some of them are included in the Mystery Edition. The Epic Edition has more picture galleries than the Mystery Edition, which doesn’t have them.
“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,” Schell said.
Schell called “The Fellowship of the Ring,” which came out in 2001, a “evergreen” movie with passionate fans. Middle-earth by J.R.R. Tolkien has been on people’s minds lately. This is because the NFT decline of the film is happening at the same time that Amazon Prime Video is releasing “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series.
Previous WB Home Entertainment releases have included both the extended version of “The Fellowship of the Ring” and all eight hours of bonus video content. All of this is part of a single experience in the NFTs, along with the new AR collectibles (like a magic wand) that are hidden in different places. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” is currently streaming on HBO Max and can be bought in a number of different ways (in both standard and extended versions). So why would someone want to buy something that isn’t money?
“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience is called a “living movie experience” by WB and Eluvio, not just a copy of the movie. Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio, says that Warner Bros. “can personalize content for each NFT, which will make it more like a game over time.”
Schell explained how Warner Bros. decided how many NFTs to make for this release: “It’s that balance between wanting it to be available to fans, and also wanting to have some level of scarcity and exclusivity.”
To get an NFT, a user must first make an Eluvio media wallet, which works like a digital safe and lets people stream and buy content. You can buy non-fungible tokens for “Fellowship of the Ring” with a credit card or a cryptocurrency wallet.
Eluvio’s Content Blockchain makes Web3 native media experiences possible, and the company says it is a “significantly more carbon-efficient alternative” to other digital asset management and NFT minting platforms. With the release of “Lord of the Rings,” not only is the token (NFT) stored on the blockchain, but so are the most important digital assets of the experience. This means that smart contracts and content experiences can be changed in real time.
Here is an image from the Rivendell image gallery in the NFT special editions of “The Fellowship of the Ring”:
Leave this field empty if you're human:
