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Excitement is building for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, with its trailer available for viewing, and there is one scene in it that is strangely familiar. Ghost in the Shell maestro Kenji Kamiyama will direct the upcoming Lord of the Rings anime movie concerning Third Age Rohan, focusing on events set 132 years before the birth of Bilbo Baggins. Based on "The House of Eorl" chapter of "Appendix A" of high fantasy expert J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the movie looks like it will reference a little-known fan movie from 2009.

The War of the Rohirrim will be the seventh Warner Bros. movie set in Middle-earth, with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies preceding it. It won't be the last, with The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum slated for release in 2026. Fan movies may well be fresh in Warner Bros.

Here’s the latest episode of the The Filmmakers Podcast, part of the ever-growing podcast roster here on Nerdly. If you haven’t heard the show yet, you can check out previous episodes on the official podcast site, whilst we’ll be featuring each and every new episode as it premieres.

For those unfamiliar, with the series, The Filmmakers Podcast is a podcast about how to make films from micro budget indie films to bigger budget studio films and everything in-between. Our hosts Giles Alderson, Dan Richardson, Andrew Rodger and Cristian James talk how to get films made, how to actually make them and how to try not to f… it up in their very humble opinion. Guests will come on and chat about their film making experiences from directors, writers, producers, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers and distributors. They also shoot the breeze about their new films, The Dare, World of Darkness,...

Forget your $250 million budgets and A-list megastars, sometimes all you need to make a good film is a bit of creative thinking and passion for your characters (intellectual property rights optional).

With feature-length fan film Star Trek: Renegades setting fandom abuzz, here's a host of unauthorised movies that put Hollywood to shame.

1. Batman battles Predator

Back in the Dark Knight's movie wilderness years (thanks for that, George Clooney!), short Batman: Dead End made waves online thanks to a mega-twist that saw the Caped Crusader in a rain-soaked showdown against a Predator. If it bleeds, Batman can kill it.

2. A Judge gets back in the saddle

A tepid box office showing from 2012's Dredd means a sequel is probably never going to happen. However, hardcore fans had their thirst quenched by the moody Judge Minty, about an ageing Mega City One Judge striding through the Cursed Earth. Think of this as...

Last summer I was working on an independent feature when I came in one morning to find the production office abuzz with hushed gossip and Chinese whispers. Pretty quickly I found out the news: the UK Film Council was to be abolished. The immediate reaction seemed to be concern; what.s the next chapter for the UK film industry? Who will fill the gap? People shouted and petitioned, a number of high profile actors and directors got involved, but it was no good. By 31st March 2011, the UKFC was closed for business.

Cut to nine months later and a house in South Devon, where director David M. Reynolds is launching an appeal . via online crowdfunding website Kickstarter – to publically fund his latest venture, The Underwater Realm. The project is a series of short films taking its audience from the height of the Roman empire right through to modern day, chronicling...

It's been a busy day for indie movies on Empire, what with the new poster for Another Year and another for The Kids Are Alright. And now here's a poster and trailer for a third movie, this time a small-scale British indie called Being Sold.It's the story of a bloke who, following redundancy, puts himself up for sale on an online auction site – ignoring several international and national laws outlawing slavery in the process, we might add. The cast includes Christopher Dane (Born of Hope), Lee Boardman (Rome), Eva Pope (Waterloo Road), Jessica Blake (The Butterfly Tattoo) as well as Chris Hannon (Lunch Monkeys), Lesley Joseph (Birds of a Feather), John Thompson, Terry Christian and Roy Walker.A percentage of the film's box office is apparently going to Amnesty International, and a release date is due to be announced in the next couple of days. Check out the poster...

Dragon Con SymbolThe Dragon Con Independent Film Festival has announced a full list of short and features films for the event. One of the largest film festivals in America, Dragon Con takes place in Atlanta, Georgia beginning September 3rd. This years feature highlights involve a zombie apocalypse taking place at a prom in As Good As Dead, two students trying to save the world from terrorists in Horrible Turn, and a prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's story The Lord of the Rings in Born of Hope. This is only a brief intro' and fans of independent film and creativity can check out the schedule for the film festival below, or at the Dragon Con website.

The full synopsis for Born of Hope:

"A scattered people, the descendants of storied sea kings of the ancient West, struggle to survive in a lonely wilderness as a dark force relentlessly bends its will toward their destruction.

A budget Lord of the Rings prequel put together by hundreds of people working for nothing has recorded nearly a million hits on video streaming sites

On the eastern flank of Epping Forest, a short walk in from the town of Debden, there is a huge tree, lying on its side, upended by a storm. It was in this clearing that independent film-maker Kate Madison, along with dozens of game volunteers, filmed Born of Hope, a homemade prequel to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy that has caused a great stir since its release in December. A production pulled together over four years with a budget of a mere £25,000 – about a tenth of one per cent of the cost of Jackson's epic – it has impressed critics and recorded close to a million views on video streaming sites. The upended tree seems a fitting place for it all to have begun.

It cost a tenth of one per cent of Peter Jackson's epic, and was shot in Essex, not New Zealand. But Born of Hope, a full-length unofficial prequel about Aragon's parents, has won rave reviews and been watched by almost a million people. Tom Lamont met its director and star in Epping Forest; the full story is in this Sunday's Observer

Tom LamontHenry BarnesAndy Hall...

Using her and#163;25,000 ($39,000) life savings Kate Madison made her own Lord of the Rings film titled Born of Hope, and as the Daily Mail points out it is getting plenty of play online and is ready to watch at the bottom of this post.

Checking out the YouTube page it is marked as in response to The Hunt for Gollum, another fan made Rings-related feature which I discussed back in May 2009 and is available to watch right here. The Hunt for Gollum follows Aragorn (Adrian Webster), the Heir of Isildur as he sets out to find the creature Gollum (voiced by Gareth Brough and Jason Perino). The creature must be found to discover the truth about the ring, and to protect the future Ringbearer.

Born of Hope is inspired by only a couple of paragraphs written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the appendices of the "Lord of the Rings." Set in...

London -- Upstart movie jamboree the London Independent Film Festival is to give low budget movie, "Born Of Hope," made by Tolkien fanatic Kate Madison, its U.K. theatrical bow.

Madison spent her entire savings and more than six years to produce, direct and star in the one hour movie, billed as a prequel to the "Lord of The Rings" trilogy of films.

It has already played out on the Inernet with more than 500,000 viewers to date.

Festival director Erich Schultz said the scope and look of Madison's project "demonstrates everything that's possible in U.K. indie filmmaking."

The festival runs April 15 through 27 across the British capital.

A Lord Of The Rings fan has spent £25,000 making Born Of Hope, an unofficial prequel movie to the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy series, reports The Telegraph. Actress Kate Madison, 31, invested her life savings to direct and star in the project. Born Of Hope follows Arathorn and Gilraen, the parents of Aragorn, a central character in Peter Jackson's acclaimed Lord Of The Rings trilogy. The 71-minute feature has already become a huge success on YouTube, registering more than 250,000 views. "I used a couple of paragraphs in the appendices [of the original book] and we followed a timeline Tolkien had written... so we had certain facts to follow, but (more)...