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The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Film and Gaming Rights Currently up for Sale - Epicstream

Both the gaming rights and the film rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are currently up for sale. According to a report from Variety, the Saul Zaentz Co. will be selling its merchandising, gaming, movie, and live event nights regarding J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy world. As of now, ACF Investment Bank is the one handling the process which will take place this week, with the ownership being shopped around to different prospective buyers in Hollywood. Based on the recent valuations, the rights should sell for at least $2 billion. The representatives for ACF and Zaentz Co. chose not to release a comment on Variety’s report.

The news breaks amid the preparation for the release of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings' first teaser during Sunday’s Super Bowl game. The release date for Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to be released on September 2. This TV series is the first live-action project that is set on Middle-earth since the last The Hobbit movie, The Battle of the Five Armies, which was released back in 2014.

In the report, it states that the lack of new developments with the intellectual property on Warner Bros.’ part is the reason why the rights were given back to Zaentz Co. Warner Bros. has been the one handling the Middle-earth business for 20 years since the release of The Fellowship of the Ring when it was first released in 2001. With Warner Bros. owning New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. will be able to maintain some rights to the property. Last year, Warner Bros. announced that an animated Lord of the Rings movie titled The War of the Rohirrim is currently in the works.

For Zaentz Co.’s rights, it reportedly includes video games, live events, films, merchandising, and theme parks. There are also a lot of limited rights involving the two other volumes of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books, The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth and The Silmarillion, published after his death in 1973.

Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to be released on September 2, 2022.

Huh

I didn’t think any the rights for Silmarillion had ever been sold to anyone. Thought they were all still property of Tolkien Estate. This being why there’s never been any 1st age tv or film treatments. Why Amazon is going 2nd age and why Peter Jackson isn’t casting for a Beleriand trilogy.

Could this affect GW's current Middle Earth game? I'm not one for all this legal lark...

Its complicated and will depend on how GWs license deal is structured and with who. The various Tolkien licenses have "forked" several times over in several different ways and through several different sources, etc. so its entirely possible that depending on how things work out, GW can continue producing miniatures and products so long as they maintain the license with whoever it is they have their current license with.

IIRC, GW is licensed directly with New Line/WB based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films (and presumably also The War of the Rohirrim which is in development - whether or not they have the rights to do stuff based on Amazons The Rings of Power series is a bit unclear, as Amazon licensed directly from the Tolkien estate rather than Zaentz, but New Line was involved in the deal as Amazon wanted to integrate the series into film canon and use film footage, etc). As such, barring a legal suit between WB and whoever ends up buying the Zaentz rights, GW should be good to go so long as it maintains its licensing deal with New Line/WB, as it seems New Line/WB to at least some extent believe themselves to hold a "forked" (a non-legal/non-technical term that I came up with) license, wherein their version of Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit/Middle Earth stands in parallel with Tolkiens and allows themselves to continue to develop and produce new content based on the films they already made, but not on content from other books/works in the Tolkien canon (like The Silmarillion) that they didn't already cover. Hence, The War of the Rohirrim which is based on a character/location referenced in The Two Towers, etc. but doesn't actually have much canonical basis in Tolkiens lore otherwise aside from a couple paragraphs and footnotes that Tolkien wrote in an Appendix.

Think of it kind of like A Song of Ice and Fire vs Game of Thrones. HBO licensed ASOIF from GRRM in order to produce GoT, but in the process GoT is a standalone/separate and distinct work from ASOIF and the two licenses exist in parallel. Thats why the ASOIF miniatures game cannot reference characters/artwork/likenesses, etc. relating to GOT (and why characters/factions/concepts created for the show will never be in the game) - because they only have the ASOIF license from GRRM rather than the GOT license from HBO.

Yeah this is where copyright and licences can get complex. At the same time I get the feeling that alongside GW having to keep potentially several different parties on the same level, they also have the fact that wargames are nice but not big enough for much challenge. There just isn't anyone else in the market big enough nor focused enough to want to take the licence for a wargame from GW. So in that sense they might be safe that whoever ends up with the licence(s) is more interested in just getting their due from GW instead of selling out the licence.

The risk would be that GW could end up paying royalties/fees that rise up and up as the core franchise increases in value and also as more people enter the pool as things get more split up. Devaluing the value for the different parties and potentially raising costs for GW.



And honestly this is always the risk with an IP you don't own. It might even be that a part of GW bringing back Old World was for things like this. Where they could eventually end up losing the LotR licence entirely.

Of course GW is in a better position now; the film model sales are nothing like they were so if they lose out its not as huge a blow as it was back when the films were big and then the market shrunk when the films stopped releasing.

Then again the new Uriki did out-sell even marines for a little bit. Soo its still significant in sales for GW

I see. Thanks for taking the time to explain it.

I mean Asmodee or CMoN could potentially challenge GW for the license. WizKids (as a subsidiary of the much larger and fairly deep pocketed NECA) could also potentially do it if ownership was interested in investing that kind of coin into a project like that. But other than that theres really not many others who would have the pockets for that kind of a play, maybe Steamforged Games as they seem to be working with some big licenses as well.