New Lord of the Rings Film Breaks the Mould – Stonewylde Might be Next

Something very exciting is happenning in the worlds of culture and spirituality. As political and economic structures creak and crack under the strain of their accumulated ‘karma’ (or to be more mundane: incompetence and greed!) new ways of expressing the human need for meaning, beauty and creative expression are emerging – often facilitated by the power of the internet.

The music and publishing industry is finding this very hard as established ways of delivering content and receiving income are rapidly changing. It’s bad news for the big conglomerates as more and more people expect free content, but good news for independents who can now reach the whole world with their unique creations. Noone yet knows how the expectation of ‘stuff for free’ can work in a world where people need money to live, but periods of uncertainty and instability (chaos even) are vital parts of the creative process, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how it all pans out.

Here are two examples of what I mean. In this month’s OBOD podcast we interviewed Kit Berry who wrote a book that no publisher wanted. She self-published it with such success that she now has three titles selling in their thousands (the Stonewylde series), and an online community of fans who want to turn them into films. Have a listen to the story of how she managed to achieve this success here. And see her website here. And still no mainstream publisher has picked her up!

In the second example, another community of fans, this time of the Lord of the Rings, decided they wanted to make a film, and they’re about to release it for free on the internet. It cost them £3,000 to make it. Like me, you’ll probably think the result would be like some awful home movie, but watch this trailer. It looks like Peter Jackson made it and there should be another three noughts after that budget figure. What IS going on? !!

For a BBC article ‘Making Middle Earth on a Shoestring’ see here.