A real-life ‘Lord of the Rings’ city could soon be a thing

If you could bring any of the beautiful cityscapes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth to life, there are certain ones that come to mind as being attainable. The Hobbit holes of the Shire? Done, and now you can actually live in one. Rivendell? If you happen to have any waterfront property near a mountain range, that conversation isn’t out of the question. Minas Tirith? HAHAHA, no, no way, that would be impossible.

Well, an “ambitious team of architects and structural engineers” thinks that creating the stone-carved, multi-tiered crown jewel of Gondor on a mountainside isn’t so much of a stretch, and not only are they planning on such a build, they’re crowd-funding on Indiegogo to make this dream happen. The end goal is a cool £1,850,000,000, which translates to $2,900,000,000. That’s right — the team behind the Minas Tirith dream is trying to raise ~3 billion dollars. We’d be more in awe if, in two weeks, they hadn’t just raised over £60,000. If they keep this pace up, they’ll hit their goal in a little over 1,200 years; alas, there are only 46 days for funding left.

Perhaps part of the reason has to be that most of the donations are coming in at double digit figures; no one has yet to claim the Lordship/Ladyship of the city perk, which’ll only set you back by £100,000. Jokes aside, this is exactly the kind of thing we dream about crowdfunding accomplishing — those pop culture pipe dream projects that would be created by the people, for the people, if only the people could rally over a fictional city from a fictional world. Without the resources of a Disney or a Universal, how else will Tolkienphiles be able to live out their dreams of singing Pippin’s song in Minas Tirith’s royal hall, or take selfies in front of the White Tree? (Just, uh, no one try to pull a Denethor.)

For those of you who want to believe, you can contribute at the Indiegogo page here. For the rest of us, there’ll probably be a LOTR marathon on TV soon; you’ll find us there.

Lord of the Rings theme park! Lord of the Rings theme park! This is SO happening.

123 reasons we’re headed back to Middle Earth for Tolkien Reading Day

(Image via New Line Cinema.)