Storied actor Andy Serkis did something rather different to raise money for coronavirus (COVID-19) relief over the weekend, sitting down for a marathon session to read The Hobbit as a 12-hour live stream.

The event was created to benefit two UK charities currently fighting the pandemic: Best Beginnings and NHS Charities Together.

These were linked to a GoFundMe page which, at the time of writing, is still receiving a steady stream of donations, despite the fact that the event is over.

At the time of writing the campaign is sitting at £292 590 / $363 455 / R6.6 million. We’ve been carefully watching the pledges come through over the past couple of days and we’re sure it will cross the £300 000 mark soon.

For those who missed out on the stream, we have some bad news. Both platforms where it was available – YouTube and Facebook – have been taken down. On YouTube the video is now private, and the Facebook version gives the old “Sorry, this content isn’t available at the moment”.

We assume this has happened because of some kind of rights issue and how this event clashes with things such as licences for audiobooks. That being said both the audio and visual contents of the livestream were lacking and far from audiobook quality.

Regardless there may be some good news on the horizon.

Shortly after the live stream ended, Serkis posted this to his official Facebook page:

“Thank you ALL so much for tuning in and for supporting our frontline workers. I am truly humbled by the response! Because of you, we raised more than £270,000 and counting! Thank you again to HarperCollins and the Tolkien Estate for making this all happen. We are going to investigate with them more opportunities to share today’s ‘one-time’ live event, so stay tuned. And with that, I bid you goodnight from London – and to you and your loved ones, stay well.”

Even with the poor quality of the stream we hope it stays online in some official capacity, even just to archive what happened.