The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Gaming and Film Rights to be Auctioned Off - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 March 2022 / 3,372 Views
The gaming and film rights for J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are reportedly going to be put up for auction by owners Saul Zaentz Co., according to Variety.
Saul Zaentz Co. has hired CF Investment Bank to handle the auction. The rights also include merchandising, live events, and theme parks, and are are expected to be sold for at least $2 billion.
An upcoming game set in the universe, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, will launch for the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam in fall 2022.
Amazon is set to launch its own The Lord of the Rings TV show in September on Amazon Prime called The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Warner Bros. does retain some film development rights to The Lord of the Rings as it owns New Line Cinema - the company behind Peter Jackson's hit The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Saul Zaentz Co. claims the live-action film rights reverted back to them last year as Warner Bros. has not been actively developing a new The Lord of the Rings film.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Big bucks $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Amazon?
the best franchise of cinema... ever. (Along with The Godfather.) In games, even if Shadow of Mordor/War, it still is leaving something to be desired.
Sony would probably be more interested in it for cinema than games tbh if they participated.
Don't know for the movies rights but for the gaming rights I would support these to be acquired by a joint venture including the big 3. This way we would have assurance that future titles be available to everyone.
I bid $1!
$2.01
As it's film, likely Sony, Disney or Universal will go for such things.
A nice one for sony there! A clean sweep for their tv, movies and gaming devision!
Although i dont think lord of the rings holds as much sway as it once did!
Hence why they are probably getting out while the getting is good!
We've reached a point where there is more content to consume than hours to consume it, for most people. So I think that's actually diminishing the overall brand value of ALL content. I am regularly told of games/movies/TV shows that I should check out, many of which I would probably really like, and few that I feel able to make time for. I think I'm becoming the norm, not the exception. The amount of content produced each year keeps increasing, and yet the rat race just keeps getting worse.
Lets see who buy and for how much.
-ONE FRANCHISE TO RULE THEM ALL NINJA APPROVED-
So shadow of Mordor series is for sale?
I hope no one ever tries to remake the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's perfect as is.
It sounds like they're grouping all of these rights together, i which case Disney is would be a heavy favorite here. They already have significant business in most of those areas. Anybody else would have to sub-license some of those things to somebody else, or pay third parties to make things for them.
Well that's interesting. You have to assume WB considered the earning potential and concluded is wasn't worth it. But they also have plenty of IPs of their own to focus on.
Curious to see where this goes even though I don't care about the IP.
Furthermore, I want to stress all the movies are bad and the books are boring.
I know it doesn't mean anything to them, but I would boycott anything LotR related. I just can't stand that company or anything out of that country.
i agree, but i did enjoy the 3rd age!
