HarperCollins UK profits double due to Tolkien TV deal with Amazon

Is this the first time it's been stated that the new Amazon series will be based on the appendices?! I'm not sure if this has been specifically stated before, has it?

I'm not sure which is why I highlighted it, but they do appear to be using material from Unfinished Tales as well, so your guess is a good as mine at the moment.

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Urulókë wrote:
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Thanks for that, if at any point you can mention anything, then please do so

Ooooh all our collections are about to sky rocket!!

Urulókë wrote:
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I'm intrigued to know why your lips are sealed. If, and when, you are able to say - please let us know

The rights situation is incredibly complicated. It seems like Amazon initially did a deal to clinch LoTR and its appendices but the final map, with its evident derivation from Unfinished Tales (the shape of Númenor as a five-pointed star, the place-names such as Armenelos and Rómenna) very clearly appeared to indicate that Amazon had bought the rights to access this material.

Yet we have heard nothing more on that score and the article at the top of the page mentions only the Appendices (which would still be the 'base-line' regardless, given that Appendix B 'The Tale of Years' provides our only chronology for dating the major events of the Second Age).

As I believe you noted elsewhere, there is significant allusion to Aldarion and Erendis on the last map (i.e. Ras Morthil, Lond Daer which sets a de minimis of 750 S.A. and as-yet no construction begun on the tower of Barad-Dur in Mordor, which sets a barrier of around the year 1000 S.A., which I guess is the probable de maximus).

Aldarion and Erendis is really the fulcrum where all the themes to later dominate in the Second Age first take root. Its only nearer the end of the story that we realise that Aldarion isn't just a terrible husband to Erendis and absentee father to his young daughter Ancalime (even though he is both of these) but that his focus is partly on protecting Middle-Earth (and Númenor) from the growing shadow about which dark rumours are starting to circulate abroad, such that in the tale Gil-galad sends an urgent letter to Tar-Meneldur begging him to abandon Númenórean isolationism and build permanent settlements along the Gwathló, to bolster defences of Calenardhon, where he fears evil will one day come.

Aldarion and Erendis is thus intensely linked to the later Númenórean intervention in the Eregion war under Tar-Minastir, courtesy of their settlement of Lond Daer (on the Gwathlo, or 'Vinyalonde') from which they successfully repel Sauron's forces in SA 1700.

Either that or I must assume they've been using Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-Earth!

Althoun wrote:

The rights situation is incredibly complicated. It seems like Amazon initially did a deal to clinch LoTR and its appendices but the final map, with its evident derivation from Unfinished Tales (the shape of Númenor as a five-pointed star, the place-names such as Armenelos and Rómenna) very clearly appeared to indicate that Amazon had bought the rights to access this material.

My reading of the information that is public is as such:

• The rights to produce a TV show were sold with the original movie rights, with a clause saying that it had to be in production within five years of the last movie being released (i.e. 2019 since BoFA was released in 2014) or the TV rights would be lost.
  
• The Estate (Simon leading) and the publisher (HarperCollins) are actively involved in the current agreement, and the negotiations likely are going well beyond the original rights sold back in the 1960s (given the price tag, as the studio could have just gone into production with a TV show based on the LOTR/Hobbit books without any additional agreement with the Estate).
  
• Nothing else is public yet. It's been pointed out a few times in various threads here that inferring what rights they have from the maps themselves is highly speculative, as even in the New Line/Warner Brothers maps and movies some place names and other "leaks" occurred that technically they didn't have the rights to but were too small to do anything about.
  

Aldarion and Erendis is thus intensely linked to the later Númenórean intervention in the Eregion war under Tar-Minastir, courtesy of their settlement of Lond Daer (on the Gwathlo, or 'Vinyalonde') from which they successfully repel Sauron's forces in SA 1700.

Based on a few public quotes from Amazon people saying they want to make the next "Game of Thrones", I personally feel that the series will have a lot of complexity and a long list of leading characters.

I've done my analysis of the Amazon Prime maps hints/meanings here back when they came out, and further looked them over with a fine toothed comb and spotted what I think are errors over here.

I'll have to hold off on further speculating for the time being. ? I'm excited though!

Thank you for the excellent and informative response!

Nothing else is public yet. It's been pointed out a few times in various threads here that inferring what rights they have from the maps themselves is highly speculative, as even in the New Line/Warner Brothers maps and movies some place names and other "leaks" occurred that technically they didn't have the rights to but were too small to do anything about.

That is certainly true when it comes to minor and largely circumstantial place-names or coast-lines but not for the actual design, shape and major geographical spots on Númenor.

The latter is a pretty huge addition that takes one well beyond the rights territory of the LoTR Appendices. For one, it isn't even part of 'Middle-Earth'.

I see no way that this could be legally published by the marketing team without Amazon having the rights to at least parts of Unfinished Tales, given that this is the only place (in the Description of Númenor chapter) where this could plausibly be lifted from.

Based on a few public quotes from Amazon people saying they want to make the next "Game of Thrones", I personally feel that the series will have a lot of complexity and a long list of leading characters.

Agreed, if the Númenóreans serve as the 'gateway' into the world of the Second Age, then we could be seeing a lot more of it than ever before outside published works. Their mariners in the Uienendili traversed the seas right down to the far south and east, well past Harad.

In LoTR, the narrative begins not with the High-Elves of Lothlorien and Rivendell, but with very human and relatable Hobbits living in a quintessentially British-style 'Shire': complete with village gossip, backbiting, class snobbery between the Bagginses and the 'uppity' Sackville-Bagginses etc.

Likewise, Game of Thrones begins with the Stark family - with the bastard son Jon Snow, the doting mother who has, nonetheless, never forgiven her husband's infidelity, the charming relationships between brothers and sisters in a land broadly similar to Scotland or Northern England.

This is done to draw the audience in to something vaguely more approachable, before the narrative expands significantly. Frodo, Bilbo and Sam are living rather normal lives in the Shire that we can all relate to, until they get caught up in the epic events of the War of the Ring.

Amazon, I think, will want to do the same with the Second Age and Númenor at the beginning is this pacific, isolationist maritime society that only hears distant rumours of a 'shadow' far away. Now, the Númenóreans are "super-men" but that's the point: they are still men, not a different species; merely homo sapiens with some biological augmentation. They retain all of our failings and desires, as can be seen from the painfully irreconcilable marriage between Aldarion and Erendis, or the greed of the colonialist Númenóreans for timber and labour.

Númenor provides the audience with more of a window in the Second Age, via their explorations, than would be the case for jumping straight into the Noldor Kingdom of Eregion.

Like you, I'm excited by the possibilities and can't help but speculate