Not Amazon but you get the idea.
The Lord of the Rings film rights were acquired from the Saul Zaentz Company by New Line in 1997 to create a feature film trilogy based on the novel. Peter Jackson directed this trilogy to tremendous acclaim, which was released from 2001 to 2003 (New Line's parent company is Warner Brothers). Warner Brothers teamed up with MGM, who owned part of the film rights to The Hobbit, to produce a prequel trilogy based on that novel ten years later. Last year, the film rights were set to lapse, reverting back to the Saul Zaentz Company. Warner Brothers had put an animated motion picture, War of the Rohirrim, into production and claimed this was enough to satisfy their legal requirement to get a film into production before the rights were due to lapse. The Saul Zaentz Company disagreed.
Whilst legal arguments were being thrashed out, the Saul Zaentz Company suddenly sold their Lord of the Rings-related rights to the Embracer Group, the Swedish multimedia mega-corp which has been hoovering up various comic book, video game and board game companies for the past decade. Exactly why Embracer would step into such a legal minefield before it had been resolved seemed unclear.
Except, of course, it is now clear. Embracer simply created a new deal with Warner Brothers and New Line, immediately resolving all legal questions and allowing everyone to move forwards with new projects.
What those projects might be is unclear. Today's statement includes a note that the companies have no interesting in mounting a remake of Peter Jackson's seminal movie trilogy. There are also rights complications with The Hobbit (MGM, now owned by Amazon, retain some of the rights to the project) and also a question over TV rights, since Amazon struck a separate deal with the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate to launch their first TV show, The Rings of Power, which launched last year to a mixed reception. There has been some suggestion that Warner Brothers might be able to create a Lord of the Rings-derived TV series as long as it stayed within even stricter legal boundaries than Amazon, but it's not been clarified what those could be.
Any further projects will have to derive from The Lord of the Rings alone, and probably in the cinema. It's possible that film-makers will tap the Third Age for more ideas of a show, maybe focusing on ides like the settling of the Shire, the war with the Witch-King of Angmar, the adventures of the young Aragorn or possibly picking up a story with some of the surviving film characters several decades on from the movie trilogy. Such projects will have to survive the withering scorn and cynicism of fans watching out for a cash-grab exploitation of Tolkien's material.
In the meantime, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim hits cinemas on 12 April 2024, whilst Amazon's Rings of Power is currently shooting its second season for a 2024 debut.
3 comments:
Very likely this isn't a 're-adaptation' of the book, in the sense of 'Hobbiton to Mordor.' Can we expect content, like the rise of the Witch King & Angmar, and the fall of Minas Ithil and Arnor??
We'll have to see. I'm getting the feeling that this may be Rings of Power-ish in approach (adapting what they can to tell a story), but not quite to the solo-spinoffs we're getting with the Star Wars franchise.
Thanks for the summary of the legal situation. I'm surprised the War of the Rohirrim actually exists beyond concept art and some voice actor contracts. I'd assumed that it was a Red Eagle Entertainment 'Winter Dragon' situation for Wheel of Time where they needed to kickstart *something* to try to retain the rights but that once the legal status was clear it would be cancelled to retain focus on live action.
Unless the Tolkien estate starts to properly license some first/second age material I can't say I'm very excited. I think they make a mistake by not - the audience is going to get burned out on some potentially mediocre material reducing the value when they do. The legacy of the 2001-2003 films can only support the franchise so long.
'Such projects will have to survive the withering scorn and cynicism of fans watching out for a cash-grab exploitation of Tolkien's material.'
- well said. And its not just the cash-grab but also the perceived betrayal of fundamental themes and altered depiction of characters that can offend. Its a minefield.
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