It’s always nice to see the folks of Middle-earth banding together again.
Earlier this year we got to watch the Lord of the Rings cast hanging out on a video call for an episode of Josh Gad’s YouTube series Reunited Apart, and now they’ve created a fellowship once again — only this time, for a very different reason.
On Wednesday, former Balrog-conquerer Ian McKellen took to Twitter to share a video advertising Project Northmoor — a campaign led by author Julia Golding to purchase J.R.R. Tolkien’s former home in Oxford, UK, so it can be transformed into a literary centre dedicated to his work.
The video features cast members from both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, including the likes of McKellen (Gandalf), Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins), John Rhys-Davies (Gimli), and Annie Lennox (who won an Academy Award for her song “Into the West” for The Return of the King), discussing Tolkien’s life and work before moving on to talk about the proposed purchase of the Grade II listed building.
Project Northmoor is aiming to raise £4.5 million ($6.1 million) via crowdfunding, which would be used to cover the cost of purchase and renovation. If successful, the ground floor of the house would be decorated to “reflect how it was when Tolkien lived at the property,” with the upstairs rooms transformed to showcase different Middle-earth cultures. The centre would then be used to run “residential courses for limited numbers”, per the site’s FAQs.
Fans can select from various different gift levels on the website, ranging from Hobbit (£20 and inclusion in a “Red Book of Funders” in Tolkien’s study) to Wizard (£200,000 and the chance to have a room in the house dedicated in your name, along with invitations to various special events).
“We cannot achieve this without the support of the worldwide community of Tolkien fan,” says McKellen in the video. “We will only succeed if we all do this together, as a fellowship.”
The campaign is only a day old at the time of writing, but the fellowship still has a long way to go yet — according to the website’s “quest progress,” six percent of the total has been raised so far, which is equivalent to around £270,000.