Following a recent string of contentious business decisions made by David Zaslav ostensibly designed to save money at the expense of art, Warner Bros. Discovery has apparently cooked up another profit-making scheme — selling the entirety of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as NFTs.

Warner Bros Discovery is releasing ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING’ in its entirety as a set of NFTs.

This will kick off the “WB Movieverse” which will release various films as NFTs.

(Source: https://t.co/sVlt7nWXhN) pic.twitter.com/oAOCK17ker

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 20, 2022

Though the headline may sound like it's from a year ago when NFTs were a hot commodity (evidence suggests this is no longer the case), it is apparently a sincere venture on the part of Warner Bros Discovery. The Verge reported that the corporation is partnering with Web3 firm Eluvio to rerelease the 2001 film as a "Web3 Movie Experience."

What does "Web3 Movie Experience" mean? To the ancient among us who remember DVDs, it sounds a lot like a DVD menu. Purchasers of the Fellowship Web3 experience will be treated to a navigation menu based on either Rivendell, the Mines of Moria, or the Shire (or all three for some extra bucks), behind-the-scenes footage and various "AR Collectibles." This is part of Warner Bros.'s plan to get people hooked into the company's "Movieverse," which may mean there will be more endeavors like this in the future.

We've written multiple articles about how fans of companies often react poorly to that brand getting into NFTs, so we won't waste space showcasing how a large portion of social media users seemingly hate the idea of Warner Bros tarnishing a beloved classic film with Web3, NFT, cryptocurrency "hooey" despite little evidence of the space ever being profitable for a mega-corporation. What we will do is showcase the one joke everyone made upon reading the news:

NON-FUNGIBLE TOLKIENS https://t.co/cksDtphzxw

— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) October 20, 2022

i prefer my tolkiens to be fungible https://t.co/PrnvXMSUqy

— heath (he/him) (@heathdwilliams) October 20, 2022

And that was the day everyone tweeted “More like non fungible TOLKIENS” https://t.co/IPKYi9LFSu

— Chris Evangelista's Dracula (@cevangelista413) October 20, 2022

According to the announcement, the Digital Movie NFT Web3 experience of Fellowship of the Ring releases tomorrow on October 21st.