"If he makes a Gollum 3D character and tries to sell it, he should give New Line Cinema a percentage (after he gets their permission to sell it, of course). " Gollum is the literary creation of JRR Tolkien. Hundreds of artists have been inspired to create images of Tolkien's work. New Line Cinema and WETA just being the latest and most widely distributed. In fact, their gollum (and an awful lot of the films' visual design) is very similar to the 1970's animated feature of LOTR. If kromekat wanted to make a charcter that was very similar in design to the WETA Gollum, and called it something else - he wouldn't owe NLC a thing.