And it’s an announcement that risks triggering a real rat race on the side of the majors cinema and entertainment. always according to varietythe investment bank ACF would have been mandated to manage the sale of exploitation rights concerning adaptations in feature films, video games, derivative products, shows and theme parks.
Some of these rights had previously been used by Warner Bros. via its subsidiary, New Line Cinema, for the double trilogy of Peter Jackson but also for a good part of the video games stamped Middle-earth that we have seen in recent years. However, Zaentz Co. believes that Warner has not sufficiently committed to the development of new content in this universe, and therefore considers that it has recovered all the rights last year (which risks inflaming an already latent conflict for several years between the two actors as to who owns what around these juicy licenses).
Those who have followed will have noticed that one element has so far been left out: what about the TV series produced by Amazon, called The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and who will start on September 2? Well, it turns out that the titan of the web has managed to get into a blind spot of the deal concluded by Saul Zaentz and the Tolkien Estate, a legal structure responsible for managing the intellectual properties of the writer, in 1976. This indeed excluded series of more than eight episodes. Amazon was thus able to negotiate directly with the foundation, without going through Saul Zaentz.
The company headed by Jeff Bezos is also one of the major candidates expected by variety for the resumption of the rights of Tolkien, estimated at nearly 2 billion dollars. On the video game side, however, it remains on a resounding failure in this area, with the abandonment of the MMO project based on The Lord of the Rings. Apart from *free-to-play on mobiles, the latest video game adaptation dates back to 2017 and Shadow of War. Only the Gollum of Daedelic and Nacon is still in the boxes.