Warner Bros announced that tomorrow (Oct 21) it plans to drop an extended version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie as an NFT and launch the WB Movieverse.
The NFT will be dropped as two versions with eight hours of features in addition to the movie and AR collectibles. A Mystery Edition will provide a navigation menu and location specific art from one of three movie locations. The Epic edition includes all three locations as well as additional images.
Warner collaborated with Eluvio for the project.
“Fans of The Lord of the Rings can now acquire, participate, and trade in an epic living media experience that will undoubtedly surprise and delight them,” said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio. “It’s truly designed for a mass consumer audience, not just Web3 enthusiasts, which is why it should, and does, feel so remarkable and engaging.
From a strategic perspective, this is potentially a new way to extend the life of movies that lend themselves to collectibles, such as Lord of the Rings. It’s planning to drop 10,000 of the Mystery edition and 999 of the Epic edition.
For now, it also gets the added plus of a bit more publicity by adding on the web3 and NFT angle.
And it gets a cut of future re-sales of the NFT – the greater of 10% or $7.99 per sale.
Is there a downside? The only possible one is that not everyone is a web3 and NFT fan. A large chunk of the gaming community is positively anti-NFTs. A recent survey of UK youth (18-24) found that 70% believe NFTs are scams.
Warner Bros has generally been ahead of the competition, releasing an NFT for the Dune Movie before the premiere, and Batman NFTs, which can influence the storyline. It also launched a standalone DC Comics NFT marketplace.
Meanwhile, Eluvio’s original background was in digital video technology. It later turned to blockchain, developing its Ethereum-compatible Content Fabric sidechain. Fox invested in Eluvio last year and its technology powers the offering of Fox’s Blockchain Creative Labs’ digital marketplace.
