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Warner Bros. Home Entertainment partnered with Eluvio to create a multimedia non-fungible token (NFT) version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) that the companies said will provide fans of the hit film series with a Web3 “Movie Experience” powered by Eluvio’s Content Blockchain.

The multimedia NFT includes a full 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) version of the first movie in Peter Jackson’s film series with over 8 hours of special features, interactive themed navigation, explorable image galleries and discoverable hidden augmented reality collectibles.

This is the first in what Warner is hoping will be a series of Web3 movie offerings from the company, according to Jessica Schell, EVP and GM of Warner Bros Home Entertainment.

The release has “important implications,” she said during a recent online interview and demo just ahead of the announcement. This is “a potential new way to handle movie distribution directly to fans, which we think is exciting, and it’s a new way to engage with fan communities.”

“If it resonates with fans, as we expect that it will, this would be the first of a series of these Web3 movie experiences,” she added.

The multimedia NFT is being promoted by the companies as the “first major studio film being released as a multimedia NFT,” allowing fans to “rediscover Middle-earth as a Living Movie Experience.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience is available for preview now at https://web3.wb.com and will be available for purchase starting Oct. 21. A limited quantity will be made available while supplies last.

Fans will be able to choose between “The Mystery Edition” at $30 and “The Epic Edition” at $100.

“The Mystery Edition” includes a surprise interactive location-based navigation menu from one of three film locations (Mines of Moria, Rivendell or The Shire), while the Epic Edition includes all three location-based navigation menus, along with all the features of ‘The Mystery Edition.” “The Epic Edition” also includes additional image galleries not included with “The Mystery Edition.”

Those who buy either edition using a credit card or crypto currency create a secure, easy-to-use media wallet that acts as a digital vault enabling them to stream and buy content, the companies said.

Explaining why Warner selected a Lord of the Rings title for its initial multimedia NFT Web3 offering, Schell said in the interview: “The IP of course needs no introduction. It’s one of our most popular catalog films [and there’s been] over a hundred million home entertainment units sold to date.”

The release also comes after the recent premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series on Amazon Prime Video, she noted.

“With IP like this, we are always looking for ways to delight the fans, engage in the fan community, and we look for new ways to make that possible by engaging with new technologies,” she told us.

Warner has “so much rich content in our archives” and, using this and other new technologies, can create “innovative new experiences for fans to enjoy,” she said.

Also, she noted: “We are trying to strike the right balance. We want to be at the forefront of technology. But we want to do it in a way that that technology is frictionless to consumers.”

Eluvio’s Tech

Eluvio recently teamed with base, a provider of cloud-native media solutions, to create a Web3 experience for The Real Cannonball Run, a feature-length documentary telling the true story of the coast-to-coast automotive race across the U.S. that was made famous globally by the Burt Reynolds movie The Cannonball Run in 1981.

The Eluvio Content Blockchain provides a high-performance, easy-to-use and cost-effective Web3 platform built for content, according to the company. It enables multiple kinds of Web3 native media experiences in addition to movies, allowing publishers and fans to also enjoy and monetize concerts, digital albums, digital collectibles, interactive and metaverse experiences, and shows, Eluvio said.

“Content creators, and their communities, benefit from a significantly more carbon-efficient alternative to traditional platforms for digital asset management, 4K streaming, ticketing, NFT minting, and trading of premium content,” according to Eluvio.

Specifically with the Lord of the Rings Web3 experience, the core digital assets, along with derivative NFTs are all on the blockchain, not just the NFT itself, Eluvio and Warner pointed out.

Benefits for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and fans include the ability to enjoy blockchain-backed access control and content rights enforcement, scalable attestation of ownership, smart contracts that enable distributed royalties, and content experiences that can “evolve over time,” it and Eluvio said.

“The owners of these NFTs actually own” the merchandise they purchase from them on the blockchain and “they can trade” them, Michelle Munson, Eluvio CEO and co-founder, said during the same interview. “And there is a built in  community marketplace,” she said. “I think this is just the beginning of those kinds of concepts,” she went on to say.

“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,” Munson said in a statement.

Eluvio’s Content Blockchain also offers a “breakthrough in carbon-footprint efficiency in the ways it manages media and uses blockchain technology, and on-chain content ownership,” it said.

Via a “novel compositional and just-in-time protocol, the Eluvio Content Blockchain does not make digital file copies and significantly reduces the network storage and usage requirements as compared to traditional streaming and content distribution systems,” it said. The technology also uses an eco-friendly “proof-of-authority” consensus, which it said avoids the high energy consumption used in computational “proof-of-work” blockchains.