Lord of the Rings rights holders contemplating Gandalf, Gollum spinoffs

The rights issues surrounding The Lord of the Rings are pretty confusing. Amazon spent hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to make a TV show set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, based on the appendices to J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved trilogy. Warner Bros., which hired Peter Jackson to make The Lord of the Rings movies back in the early 2000s, is making a new animated movie called War of the Rohirrim, Weta Workshop and Private Division are teaming up on a new Middle-earth video game, and so on. The series is a godsend for intellectual property lawyers who have to sort through all of this.

And now, per Deadline, a Swedish holding company called Embracer Group has purchased Middle-earth Enterprises, which which means it has picked up the rights to make movies, video games, board games, theme parks, stage productions and more based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

A holding company, FYI, is a company that doesn’t really produce anything itself, but goes around buying other companies that do produce stuff. It’s kind of a dystopian idea, frankly, but let’s just move past that for now. One of the companies in Embracer’s portfolio, Asmodee Group, has already made stuff like The Lord of the Rings board game and The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, so they have some Middle-earth experience.

Company buys Lord of the Rings, pitches spinoff movies about every character

But what will Embracer do with all these Lord of the Rings rights now that it has them? According to its statement, there’s a lot on the table, including “additional movies based on iconic characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum, Galadriel, Eowyn, and other characters from the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien.” And that and the company will “continue to provide new opportunities for fans to explore this fictive world through merchandising and other experiences.”

If there’s one thing I love, it’s exploring fictive worlds through merchandising experiences. And I think most fans agree with me.

Does this mean we’re definitely going to see Gandalf: The Movie in theaters in 2025? Not necessarily; I think a lot will depend on how this next wave of Lord of the Rings content goes over. If people love The Rings of Power and The War of the Rohirrim, expect a lot more stuff in Middle-earth. If not…

Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Amazon Prime Video on September 2.

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