The rights to make Lord Of The Rings movies, games and theme parks now sit with a new owner: more details here.
It’s been around six months since we heard that the Zaentz Company, the longtime owners of the film rights to J R R Tolkien’s legendary fantasy series The Lord Of The Rings, was set to put them on sale. At the time, we were informed that not only would this include movie rights, but also rights for video games as well, potentially a hugely lucrative market. Add in merchandising and live events rights, two other areas that might also earn a quid or two, and it seemed like this purchase might cost a couple of billion, with Amazon expected to gun for the rights to augment its upcoming Rings Of Power show alongside a host of other Lord of the Rings media.
It hasn’t quite turned out that way however. Instead, Swedish gaming publisher Embracer (formerly THQ Nordic) has snapped up the rights for far below what was thought to be the going rate, reportedly paying around $700m for everything.
If you’re a gaming fan, Embracer will have popped up on your radar recently when it snapped up the rights to Tomb Raider and a few other popular game franchises that were being sold off for a song by Square Enix. Why might a gaming publisher want to make movies, you might be wondering? Well, the odds are that it doesn’t.
Most of the rights for The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit are licensed out, with Warner Bros currently holding the license to make films, for example. (That’s why we’re getting the animated War Of The Rohirrim movie in 2024.) It’s unlikely that Embracer will look to make anything, rather it will aim to profit from existing or new licensing deals in the coming years. In terms of films, that means that solo movies exploring characters like Aragorn and Gandalf are reportedly being mooted. It’s certainly another step in the pan-media IP accumulation that has been going on for some time now, with companies looking to exploit licenses across multiple media and platforms.
Whatever happens, it means we can expect more Lord Of The Rings in the coming years as Embracer look to make good on its outlay. We’ll let you know more on this story as we hear it.
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