Lord of the Rings NFT collection sold for $100,000
Films and NFTs form the junction between tradition and modernity. Movie-related non-fungible tokens are a way for many to immortalize their favorite movies or make money as the NFT space is still full of potential.
What are the most popular movies of all time?
According to an IMDB ranking, the most popular movies are:
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The Shawshank Redemption
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The Godfather, Part I and II
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The Dark Knight
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12 angry men
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Schindler’s List
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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
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Pulp Fiction
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The good, the bad and the ugly
The most valuable NFTs and NFT collections
The most popular movie did not generate the most valuable NFT. An NFT portrait of Morgan Freeman from The Shawshank Redemption is selling for $249.76 on OpenSea.
It’s a different story than Lord of the Rings. In October 2022, Warner Bros. together with Eluvio, a blockchain company, to launch the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring. This marked the first time a major studio released an entire film as an NFT.
Fellowship of the Ring NFTs were the first to become available in a new NFT marketplace, the WB Movieverse, which also includes other Warner Bros. titles. Fans can trade, buy and sell NFT movies on the platform.
Warner Bros. and Eluvio featured two editions: Epic and Mystery. The first contained 999 copies, each valued at $100. There were 10,000 copies in the Mystery Edition priced at $30 each. Buyers could watch Fellowship of the Ring in 4K UHD and access hidden augmented reality collectibles, hundreds of images and more special features. The extended version of the film was almost four hours long.
The Epic Edition included essential location-specific art and menus for navigating the three movie locations – Rivendell, The Shire, and Mines of Moria. One of the places was randomly assigned. There were several picture galleries.
Fans of the film series could purchase an NFT depicting a landscape from the Mystery Edition for $100. The 999 Epic Edition NFTs sold out almost immediately after launch, generating a combined value of nearly $100,000.
Dark Knight NFTs are available on Solsea for 0.5 SOL. A collection of Godfather NFTs is on sale at Mintspace. Each item in this collection is currently priced at $119.
The most expensive film NFT in history
The most expensive film NFT was a script excerpt from Pulp Fiction. Film director Quentin Tarantino announced that he would hold seven auctions of excerpts as NFTs, which provoked a lawsuit from film studio Miramax in November 2021. Miramax claimed that the film director’s plans would disrupt their NFT capitalization strategy. Tarantino eventually held one auction, selling the first NFT for $1.1 million. The rest were canceled due to “volatile markets”, and the director settled with the studio in 2022.
Which platform earns the most from NFTs?
While smaller players such as Mintspace and Solsea are not out of the market, OpenSea has the lion’s share of the pie. According to Nansen’s Trends and Indices, wallets worth $250,000+ have consistently interacted with NFT platforms since April 2022, with the bulk of trading split between the largest NFT marketplace and some newer ones.
Last September, OpenSea supported 350,000 ETH trading volume and 1.85 million transactions. Total volume decreases, but the number of individual transactions and users remains constant.
Data from UK NFT searches
Freelancing platform Fiverr published some research on NFT-related searches in the UK in April 2022. At the time, these searches were widespread, indicating that UK businesses were looking for ways to use digital goods and services, immersive experiences and gamification marketing to drive their bottom line and increase brand loyalty. Specifically, searches for “NFT-related skills” were up 902% from the previous year. There was an increasing focus on willingness to participate in gamification and Web3.
According to Google Trends, the number of searches for “nft” is steadily decreasing. It has fallen from 164,000 in March 2022, to just 25,000 in the last month at the time of writing. The greatest interest has been in England, followed by Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland is last.
However, statisticians remain optimistic. According to Statista’s outlook, NFT revenues in the UK will reach $168.10 million this year. The NFT industry CAGR is expected to reach 34.5% between 2022 and 2028.
