Movie Rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT Acquired by Video Game Company
A Swedish video game company named Embracer Group has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns the intellectual property catalog and worldwide rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
They now own the motion picture, video game, board game, merchandising, theme parks, and stage production rights relating to these two epic fantasy franchises. They also picked up matching rights in other Middle-earth-related literary works authorized by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins, which have yet to be explored.
Lars Wingefors, Founder and Group CEO Embracer Group, said in a statement: “I am truly excited to have The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, one of the world’s most epic fantasy franchises join the Embracer family, opening up more transmedia opportunities including synergies across our global group. I am thrilled to see what lies in the future for this IP with Freemode and Asmodee as a start within the group. Going forward, we also look forward to collaborating with both existing and new external licensees of our increasingly stronger IP portfolio.”
In a statement, Marty Glick, COO of The Saul Zaentz Company, said: “We at the Zaentz Company have had the honor over the past half century of stewarding the Tolkien rights so that Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fans worldwide could enjoy award winning epic films, challenging video games, first rate theatre and merchandise of every variety. We could not be more thrilled that it is Embracer now taking up the responsibility and we are confident their group will take it to new heights and dimensions while maintaining homage to the spirit of these great literary works.”
Some of the upcoming Middle-Earth projects that were previously set up by Middle-earth Enterprises before Embaracer Group acquired it are Amazon’sThe Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, Warner Bros. animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, and the EA mobile game The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth.
This is a pretty big deal, and it will be interesting to see what Embracer Group ends up doing with Tolkien’s creations in the future. I mean, they have the power to do all kinds of things, including remaking The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films if they wanted to.
Middle-earth Enterprises "will continue to operate independently under the existing [...] leadership team," but Embracer is hoping to expand the franchise as they are looking for "opportunities includ[ing] exploring additional movies based on iconic characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum, Galadriel, Eowyn and other characters from the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkein."
I don’t know, this acquisition kinda makes me nervous about what will be done with Tolkien’s work. Maybe some cool stuff will come from it, maybe some bad stuff. We’ll just have to wait and see. What do you think?
