The story is on the TORn homepage. Expect discussion to begin soon on the Main Forum.

I was just on the way back to ask this very thing.

Clearly we'll be recasting Aragorn, Gandalf and Legolas as they all have a major role to play in the hunt for Gollum. Not to mention Sauron.

I hope they recast - I know they have the power of CGI and can likely use tricks or even de-age the original actors. But I hope they don't.

We don't know anything about the second film yet

Um…
I doubt he would want to do it again even with CGI youthening or AI. It should be too active a role.

Somebody should tell Tom Cruise it’s time to give up the mission impossible series.

I hope there is a way that they can shoehorn her into the story if she’s willing. Perhaps Aragorn passes through Lothlorian on his way to get to Moria to pick up Gollum’s trail.

[Oh, golly, the whole Tauriel storyline was what I most hated about the Hobbit] So please , no.

The twin elves on the other hand, I think could successfully be put in there. But perhaps it’s because I really enjoyed the fan film Born of Hope that they were in. I think that would be a successful way to pad the stories not some jacked up love story.

I should be excited but I'm feeling dread instead.

The story sounds like it's going to be by necessity 95% original PJ ideas, 5% Tolkien, and based on the Hobbit movies I don't expect for the original PJ ideas to be any good, though maybe he might produce something better with more time to plan things through.

The other issue is that the Tolkien "story" behind the movie is really just a fragment of backstory that I don't think is capable of standing on its own as an independent work and was never meant to do so.

I can see two main ways that the story could be realistically adapted in our situation:
a) A slapstick comedy in which Wile E. Coyote (Aragorn) hunts the roadrunner (Gollum) for three hours and gets him in the end.
b) A very dramatic and serious three-hour epic with kingdoms and armies from all the old fan-favorite countries culminating in an epic battle (more epic and dramatic than any ever filmed by PJ) over who gets to interrogate Gollum and learn about the One Ring. Denethor would probably appear as a side antagonist whose designs for the Ring Aragorn needs to thwart.

It's dismal. I think I would prefer the comedy option. Comedies can withstand plot issues in a way that dramas can't.

Thranduil says Aragorn goes by the name Strider in the wild and "His real name you must discover for yourself"

This means Aragorn is still hiding his true name. He receives his name from Elrond shortly before meeting Arwen. So this must be just after BoFA

Reading the Tale of Years and Of the Rings of Power, Aragorn meets Arwen very shortly after the Battle of Five Armies, it is said he was out on some errands with Elrond's sons. Well we just replace the sons with Legolas and it all fits. Aragorn would be about 27 when he meets Arwen. Not a big change.

Gandalf already has suspicions about Bilbo's ring at the end of BoFA. He explicitly says so to Bilbo and gives him a dark look. That is enough for Gandalf to wonder "Who was this Gollum chap" and want him hunted down. So he gets Legolas and Aragorn to do so.

The book tells us 2951 - Gollum heads to Mordor and the Nazgul reoccupy Dol Guldur. But why?? What's Gollum doing? Wouldn't he more likely be tracking Bilbo and end up lost in Mirkwood or Dol Guldur?

It says Aragorn later does errantries for Gandalf under the name Thorongil. Well this could be one of his tasks. We then take all of the Hunt for Gollum that was cut from FotR and place it 20 years earlier, tying it with the attack of Dol Guldur on Thranduil's Halls. (There's no way the hunt and questioning etc all took place during Gandalf's short excursion to Minas Tirith, it would be weird to retcon that in now)

There's no reason at all this needs to take place after Bilbo's birthday or before the Council. It's completely arbitrary when it happens, as long as Gandalf has the information that Gollum knows "Shire" and "Baggins" then he can piece it all together after reading Isildur's account.

If you mean Tolkien's "Tale of Years" (Appendix B), Aragorn is only 10 years old at the time of the Quest of Erebor. How is 2951 "shortly after the Battle of Five Armies"? If you are looking at my version for the films, take it with a grain of salt or two. I'm not going to claim that it's completely accurate. If (film) Aragorn was 87 when Sauron fell then his twentieth birthday was in 2935, fifteen years before PJ's Hobbit films.

I suppose this might mean the permanent Hobbiton will get a paint job.

The removal “was an ‘uh-oh’ moment for the fan base,” Michael Regina, a founder of the popular fan site TheOneRing.net, said in an email. Shortly after the takedown, Bouchard appealed YouTube’s decision and explained his movie’s status as a noncommercial film.

Early on, he had reached an agreement with the Tolkien estate ensuring that his project would respect its intellectual property, and that it would be freely available and noncommercial. “We were lucky that they looked kindly on it as something that was for the fan community,” Bouchard said.

My understanding is that Tolkien did sketch out a subplot where Gollum was brought back to life by a Genesis Device, his living spirit having been transferred to Frodo just before he fell to his death. The challenge is to reunite mind and body, which is what the new film is about.

TP.