The Swedish videogame group Embracer he bought Middle Earth Enterprisesthe company that owns the rights to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and all the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Rights include movies, books, stage productions, video games, theme parks and merchandise.
Embracer acquires the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
As early as last February, Variety reported that the previous owner of the rights, Saul Zaentz Co., was trying to sell the rights. Concerning the works set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, including The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, published after the author’s death in 1973.
The rights will be managed by the subsidiary Embracer Freemode. Which did not disclose the exact amount paid for these rights. But an evaluation made before the acquisition estimated the value around two billion dollars. A real Tessssoro (excuse the joke but it was impossible not to write it).
Until recently it was thought that a film production company could secure the rights to Tolkenian works. In particular, Amazon seems to be in contention given the next debut in the series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, outgoing on 2 September and based on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Instead they went to the Karlstad-based company, which it publishes board and card games linked to Middle-earth under the subsidiary Asmodee Group. Which at the end of last year he had also bought Dark Horsethe comic book label it publishes Hellboy e The Umbrella Academy.
However, we would like to point out that the Amazon The Rings of Power will not exploit newly acquired rights by Embracer. In fact, Saul Zaentz (who died in 2014) had acquired the rights in 1976, including for films and TV. But he hadn’t taken the rights for one series of more than eight episodes. A quirk that Amazon exploited to negotiate the rights of The Rings of Power directly with Tolkien’s family.