The company that owns the rights to JRR Tolkien’s works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by Swedish video game firm Embracer Group, which has hinted that they will make films ” spin-off” based on popular characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum.
Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the company that controls the intellectual rights to films, video games, board games, merchandise, theme parks based on films and sets related to the two most popular works of Tolkien’s literature.
The deal also reportedly includes “equal rights” to other Middle-earth-related literary works authorized by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins – primarily The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth – which have been published after Tolkien’s death in 1973.
When the business was put up for sale by the Saul Zaentz Company, which in 1976 had bought these rights from the heirs of the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins, it was expected that it would be bought by Amazon so that they could build their own empire of Middle- earth.
In 2017, Amazon paid 248 million euros for the production rights to a pre-Lord of the Rings series called Rings of Power, which will launch globally on September 2 on the service. Amazon’s Prime Video.
Amazon had negotiated directly with the Tolkien Estate to make the series, as the original rights deal made by Saul Zaentz in 1976 did not include control over making television series of more than 8 episodes.