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

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.

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.

Well at least two of them have GURPS sourcebooks!
There are a few Discworld board games and I do enjoy all the BBC made Discworld movies very much (Color of Magic being the worst of the bunch, perhaps because I have read that book).

Then again I just watched that Riverworld pilot that SciFi (before it was SyFy) put out hoping for a full series. I'm a bit bummed because I thought it was actually good.

Wooooow, how did Amazon NOT snatch these up on the eve of the RoP release? Were I Bezos I'd just get everything Tolkien so I could stop paying millions per word of his text. Still, it's only a 20 year ROI before most, if not all, of it hits Public Domain and I really don't want Amazon joining forces with Disney to freeze the PD in the US for another century.

If a faceless conglomerate has the IP now and just wants to monetize it then I expect we are gonna see a FLOOD of all things Middle-Earth. I feel like a lot of the appeal in the past has been how tightly gated much of it was by Christopher, but hopefully we will see some high-quality new material.

jason10mm wrote: I feel like a lot of the appeal in the past has been how tightly gated much of it was by Christopher, but hopefully we will see some high-quality new material.

The Tolkien estate only ever controlled (and still does) the book publishing rights. The Embracer group bought the "everything else" rights.