Swedish gaming giant buys Lord of the Rings and Hobbit rights | JRR Tolkien
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Loading... - Charlotte Reid
- 06 Sep 2022
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The company that owns the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by the Swedish gaming firm Embracer Group, which has hinted that it could make spin-offs of films based on such popular characters as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum.
Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the holding company that controls the intellectual property rights to films, video games, board games, merchandise, theme parks and stage productions associated with Tolkien’s two most famous literary franchises.
The deal also includes “matching rights” to other Middle-earth literary works authorized by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins, most notably The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, which were published after Tolkien’s death in 1973.
When the business was put up for sale by the Saul Zaentz Company, which purchased its rights from Tolkien’s and HarperCollins’ heirs and estates in 1976, Amazon was expected to buy it to build its own Middle-earth empire.
In 2017, Amazon paid $250m (£208m) for the rights to produce a big-budget prequel to The Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, due worldwide on its Prime Video service on September 2nd. Read More…
