Various rights for J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are going up for sale this week.
According to Variety, movie, merchandising, gaming and live-event rights to Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are going to be up for auction, as the Saul Zaentz Company, which holds those rights, has decided to sell them. Current projections estimate those rights could earn more than $2 billion. Zaentz Company and ACF Investment Bank, which is handling the sale, declined to comment on Variety's article.
The timing of the auction is not thought to be accidental and is, in fact, related to Amazon's upcoming live-action TV series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon is said to be one of the top potential buyers for these various rights, which include limited matching rights should the Tolkien estate decide to make content based on The Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth.
In 2001, New Line Cinema released The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Directed by Peter Jackson, that film and its two sequels, 2002's The Two Towers and 2003's Return of the King, proved successful both critically and commercially. At this time, Warner Bros., which owns New Line Cinema, is thought to retain some film rights to Lord of the Rings. As such, the studio is currently working on the animated Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which takes place 250 years before the films and follows King of Rohan Helm Hammerhand. However, Warner Bros. lost many of its live-action film rights due to not actively developing new Lord of the Rings content.
Set in Middle-earth, The Hobbit follows Bilbo Baggins on his quest to help a group of dwarves defeat a dragon named Smaug and win a share of the beast's treasure. The Lord of the Rings is a sequel to that story and follows the Fellowship of the Ring on its quest to destroy the One Ring and keep it out of the hands of the evil Sauron.
In 2017, Amazon bought the TV rights for Lord of the Rings, paying an $250 million for them. The first season of the series, which take place during the Second Age of Middle-earth and thus before the events of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, cost Amazon nearly half a billion dollars. While the first season has not released, Amazon has already renewed The Rings of Power for Season 2.
Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is slated to premiere on Sept. 2.
Source: Variety