The Hobbit pub has been saved, reports the BBC.
This little pub that has been in Southampton, England for two decades was sued by Hollywood big wigs from the film firm the Saul Zaentz Company over copyright infringement.
The pub's customers started a Facebook campaign to get the word out and it got upwards of 57,000 supporters.
Eventually, they settled on licensing the name out to the pub, which means it has to pay fees to the firm.
Enter Gandalf.
Sir Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry are going to pay the fee for the copyright settlement. McKellen plays Gandalf in the upcoming movie "The Hobbit" (as he did in the Lord of the Rings trilogy), and Fry plays the Master of Laketown.
The fee is said to be around $100 per year, but the bar has been in business for over 20 years, so it's unclear how much McKellen and Fry will be paying.
Regardless, The Hobbit pub has gotten a massive amount of publicity throughout its ordeal likely worth far more than whatever fee it ends up paying.
Still, the folks that run the bar aren't totally convinced that this is going to end things. From the BBC:
"They have said to us they will offer us a licence to trade, but we don't know whether it means trading as The Hobbit, whether we still have to get rid of all our artwork, cocktail names, everything. We just don't know what's entailed."
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