Tolkien Fans are Trying to Build a Crowdfunded Lord of the Rings City

Most of us, at some point in our lives, have dreamt of living in the fantastic worlds that we experience in works of fiction. A group of friends has decided that dreams just aren’t enough, so they have developed a plan to bring an iconic castle and its surrounding city from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to life in the UK.

Minas Tirith, the fictional city, was visually realized in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, but the structure was never built to-scale. Jackson took inspiration from the island commune of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy and had portions of the citadel built as sets, as well as a very detailed miniature sculpted by Weta Workshops.

Using Indiegogo, the group of Tolkien enthusiasts are attempting to replicate Peter Jackson’s interpretation somewhere in South England, and have included residential and commercial properties in the plans so that the attraction could also function as a community. They have set an admittedly ambitious and absurd goal of £1,850,000,000 GBP (roughly $2.9 billion), and have given themselves 60 days to reach it.

So far, nearly 1,500 fans have contributed to the noble cause, which uses lord or ladyships of the city, Twitter follows, and overnight stays for two as incentives for donating. The Hobbiton movie set in New Zealand has been a big tourist attraction for the town of Matamata, so imagine what a real-life version of Gondor’s greatest city would do for England’s economy.

Check out the Indiegogo page here.