Hollywood producers against the establishment of hobbies holes in the UK

Jan and Ed Lendzhil - a married couple from the UK, dedicated to recreation organization in nature weekends, organized a campaign on the known resource for Kickstarter crowdfunding to raise money for a new kind of weekend houses. But instead of an influx of people who want to spend time in an unusual environment, entrepreneurs experienced the full power of the legal anger of legalists from Warner Bros companies. and  Tolkien Estate .

The thing is that the Längils engaged in luxury camping (which they call “glamping”, glamorous camping) decided to please their potential customers with the opportunity to stay in a house that at the same time resembles an old English-Saxon pit-house building (in fact, a dugout) and ... a hobbies hole! After all, J.R.R. Tolkien was not from scratch inventing his universe of Middle-earth - the cozy life and life of the hobbits just resemble the old Anglo-Saxon way.

The remains of such dugouts are often found in the UK. Although, if earlier it was believed that most people lived in such houses, now researchers are inclined to think that they mainly played the role of storage facilities and other non-residential premises.



In a clip of funny music stylized as a Middle Ages, Jan Langil and history consultant Alan Baxter show pastoral views and talk about how new buildings for glamorous luxury camping will take visitors to a leisurely authentic Middle Ages. Of course, with the exception of all modern amenities.

But not for long the music (which the entrepreneurs borrowed from the films of P. Jackson) played, and after disseminating information about the going company, it was attacked by lawyers who own all the rights to Tolkien's works. It is not surprising - after all, Lendjiles freely used names such as “hobbit hole”, “hobbiton” and other references to the work of the Professor.

As a result, Kickstarter management decided to remove the campaign from the site before the end of the proceedings. But entrepreneurs quickly went to meet the legalists. They just had to remove all mentions of the hobbits and Middle-earth from the commercials, campaigns and from their website. Now the home will be called poddit hole, and the whole camp - Podditon , and it is found to be in a place «Centre-Earth».



The campaign has prizes ranging from £ 2 to £ 1,000. Donors of sums up to £ 80 will receive thanks and T-shirts, and more generous - the right to spend one or several nights at the new campsite, which is due to appear in Suffolk this October.

The campaign returned to Kickstarter, today 10 days are left until its end. But her problems did not end there. Representatives of the copyright owners were unsatisfied with the renaming, and require other names instead of “poddit” and “center-earth”, which should not rhyme with “hobbit” and generally have something in common with Tolkien's work. Lendzhily insist that they have already bent quite strongly under the requirements of lawyers, and their further requirements are not reasonable.



This, of course, is not the first case of creative copyright issues.Professors . In 2011-2012, Hollywood owners of the rights to works of the writer took up arms against small entrepreneurs all over the UK, where pubs and other public institutions abound, in the name of which there is the word "Hobbit". However, some institutions have been wearing them for decades. In addition, researchers note that the word and creature “hobbit” was found in local folklore even before Tolkien first used it in his works.

By the way, also in October of this year on the shelves of sites will appear a new work of Tolkien, which was found among his manuscripts, and had never before been published. It will be released on October 27 under the title "The Story of Kullervo", edited by Tolkien, a scholar of creativity, Verlin Flieger.