A few weeks before the debut of the new Amazon prequel series to The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, news has come that the intellectual properties of J.R.R. Tolkien’s main works will change hands for the first time since 1976.
The budget for the new Amazon Prime series was enormous, around one billion dollars. A major gamble in order to be able to recoup the initial expenditure for the exploitation rights of $250 million. The fear, therefore, was that given the expense, the investment would stop there. The agreement reached for the sale of the entire package of Tolkien’s two main works completely shatters all expectations. The new owner will be Embracer Group.
Lars Wingefors, Founder and CEO of Embracer Group said: ‘I am very 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 in our global group. I’m excited to see what’s next for this IP with Freemode and Asmodee as the start within the group. Moving forward, we look forward to collaborating with both existing and new external licensees in our increasingly strong IP portfolio.”
The likelihood that the Lord of the Rings magic machine will be up and running again as soon as possible is very tangible and close. Embracer, on the other hand, deals with video game products, so it is also possible that it could turn to other groups in the audiovisual industry to possibly develop new series or films.
📷pixabay
