Embracer Group (owners of Asmodee) buys Lord Of The Rings IP

Embracer Group buys rights to ‘Lord of the Rings’ films and other Tolkien intellectual property

Swedish company Embracer Group said Thursday that it agreed to acquire Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns worldwide rights to “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” film trilogies as well as other properties related to the books by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Embracer is buying Middle-earth Enterprises from the Saul Zaentz Company, which has owned the film rights to the fantasy works since 1976.

The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, which gives Embracer the rights to movies, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions relating to Tolkien’s works.

“I am truly excited to have The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, one of the world’s most epic fantasy franchises join the Embracer family,” said Lars Wingefors, the company’s founder and CEO, in a release. “Going forward, we also look forward to collaborating with both existing and new external licensees of our increasingly stronger IP portfolio.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/18/embracer-group-buys-rights-to-lord-of-the-rings-and-tolkien-related-intellectual-property.html

Embracer is like the embodiment of 21st century capitalism to me. They constantly acquire things and make very little, backed up by the endless cash of the investment class. Growth irregardless of revenue or profit to gain pricing power.

So... Ticket to Rohan?

I can't wait to find out how Gandalf got his hat and how Aragorn got the nickname "Strider."

Virabhadra wrote: So... Ticket to Rohan?

You’ll see Minas Tirith on the map, but there will be no option to connect it to the Westfold.

I wish we could all move on to some other sci-fi or fantasy franchise. There are some other great books that have never been translated to tv or movies. Or a brand new concept could also be welcome.

Just off the top of my head:

1. Amber (Roger Zelazny)
2. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (Fritz Leiber)
3. World of Tiers (Philip Jose Farmer)
4. Riverworld (Philip Jose Farmer)
5. Well of Souls (Jack Chalker)
6. Master Li and Number Ten Ox (Barry Hughart)
7. Elric and other Eternal Champions (Michael Moorcock)
8. The Dying Earth (Jack Vance)
9. The Black Company (Glen Cook)
10. Discworld (Terry Pratchett)

I'm sure there are others that I have forgotten just now. The point is that we don't need to scrape through Tolkien's old notebooks to find the final scraps of potential stories when there are other works gathering dust. It would also be nice to hear millennials talk about something other than Harry Potter.

I agree with you but tbf most millenials and zoomers I talk to day to day only talk about Harry Potter because of Rowling's TERFdom so they don't even have that fantasy universe in their lives.

Shellhead wrote: I wish we could all move on to some other sci-fi or fantasy franchise. There are some other great books that have never been translated to tv or movies. Or a brand new concept could also be welcome.

Agreed.
Of course the inevitable chorus of "experts" declaring "bUt PeOpLe HaTe NeW tHiNgS aNd OnLy WaNt ThE fAmiLiAr StUfF!" forget that it was no guarantee that those 3 LotR movies were ever going to succeed, but thanks to strong source material AND Peter Jackson's love of said source material it turned out to pretty much create an entire cottage industry for the fantasy genre. Just in terms of boardgames we would have probably never had War Of The Ring, or the GW Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, or FFG's LotR LCG, or that goofy FFG app game that I dislike. And those are just the boardgames that spring to mind. Who knows how many generic fantasy products would have gone unmade in the subsequent years without the global success of those LotR films.

I wager over 50% of LotR "fans" never read the books & only started caring when they saw the films. But Hollywood won't make that bargain anymore to establish a new IP that could potentially reach those levels. Is it a long-shot? Yeah. Great source material told by someone great who understands it, done in a great style is probably a long-shot. But at some point there will be some IP that catches on and sets a standard that thousands of future projects will follow. So why not really do some research, find some highly dedicated people, and take that swing. I know, easier said than done. But the point is: the LotR films were no slam-dunk in 2001.

I often think about how Warhammer Fantasy was the original setting for Warcraft, and what a different world that might have looked like.

Is it time to dust off Runebound?

fightcitymayor wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I wish we could all move on to some other sci-fi or fantasy franchise. There are some other great books that have never been translated to tv or movies. Or a brand new concept could also be welcome.

I wager over 50% of LotR "fans" never read the books & only started caring when they saw the films. But Hollywood won't make that bargain anymore to establish a new IP that could potentially reach those levels. Is it a long-shot? Yeah. Great source material told by someone great who understands it, done in a great style is probably a long-shot. But at some point there will be some IP that catches on and sets a standard that thousands of future projects will follow. So why not really do some research, find some highly dedicated people, and take that swing. I know, easier said than done. But the point is: the LotR films were no slam-dunk in 2001.

Hollywood is littered with the carcasses of studios throwing money into the "this will be the next LOTR" hole. Mediocre unfinished grand trilogies everywhere you look.

Ah_Pook wrote: Hollywood is littered with the carcasses of studios throwing money into the "this will be the next LOTR" hole. Mediocre unfinished grand trilogies everywhere you look.

Agreed. Because they try to cut corners and sign up junior-varsity level talent to helm mediocre projects based on marginal material that never should have been greenlit to begin with.

I mean LOTR wasn't some crazy hot property before the movies came out, and Peter Jackson was a more or less unknown weirdo who had made a bunch of crazy splatter movies... It's easy to say these things in hindsight but I doubt the movie companies dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into their big wannabe fantasy tentpole franchises in the early 2000s would agree with your assessment

I think y'all have dropped the lede. The point isn't to do something with it, the point is to own it. The Tolkien IP is just a huge NFT that Embracer hopes to sell at a profit in two years. Any publishing they do on it is just to burnish its reputation, to increase its perceived value.

All this negativity is a drag. I for one am super-excited about More Of The Same.