'Lord of the Rings' and ‘The Hobbit’ Film and Gaming Rights Up for Sale

God help us all.

In contrast, sales at Disney's US amusement parks hit a record in the last three months of 2021.

Overall, the company's revenues rose by 34% year-on-year to $21.8bn (£16.1bn) for the quarter, while profits surged to $1.1bn.

Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Disney's parks were "doing much better than feared, despite ongoing Covid fears".

"Getting customers through the gates is one thing, but being able to sell them mountains of branded food, toys and gifts is what truly makes Disney a remarkable business," she added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60327314

Looks to me like they will soon be adding Tolkien theme parks to sell Tolkien "branded food, toys and gifts"

gobbledygook wrote:

God help us all.

Yup.

“The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

-Christopher Tolkien

Trotter wrote:

In contrast, sales at Disney's US amusement parks hit a record in the last three months of 2021.

Overall, the company's revenues rose by 34% year-on-year to $21.8bn (£16.1bn) for the quarter, while profits surged to $1.1bn.

Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Disney's parks were "doing much better than feared, despite ongoing Covid fears".

"Getting customers through the gates is one thing, but being able to sell them mountains of branded food, toys and gifts is what truly makes Disney a remarkable business," she added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60327314

Looks to me like they will soon be adding Tolkien theme parks to sell Tolkien "branded food, toys and gifts"

Well, if nothing else, it will supply us with plenty of strange Tolkien items to gawk at and ask "why would you ever make this?"

...but Tolkien, like space travel, is a personal obsession for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos



https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2 ... 8L0LNjJVarUcXEZ_QdJvdEL3A

northman wrote:

“The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

-Christopher Tolkien

I was not aware of this quote, but I thoroughly agree with Christopher's thoughts.

While we all here have a healthy respect for Christopher and what he achieved, I feel that sometimes what he said about the movies were so personal to the point of not meaning much for the average viewer. The movies brought millions of people to Tolkien and this series will too.

Maybe of interest to some of you, when Bonhams put some of his letters up for auction I was able to read some examples sent to me by them when I was considering bidding on them.

One quote sticks outs.

From a letter dated 31 January, 1979:

>As regards the question of the film: I have not seen it and do not intend to, but I have seen a book with pictures taken from the film. I will not deafen you with vociferous condemnation and say no more than that I regard it with abhorrence, as a wholly unbelievable travesty of my father's work and a denial of the entire imaginative and aesthetic outlook. I do not wish to be associated with the film in any way that I can help; nor would United Artists want my assistance if they knew my feelings!

His attitude changes little and I imagine had someone made a really stonking adaptation that was truly faithful, he would have found reason to be underwhelmed. That's not a criticism per se, he was so close to the work and cared deeply about it. But this Christopher quote from Le Monde about the Peter Jackson movies is in my opinion overused to now encompass anything that has the words Tolkien and adaptation in it.

I think these are all fair points, thanks for sharing that other Christopher quote too!

I was doing a little timeline investigation today:

• 3 July 2017 - The lawsuit between Warner Brothers and the Estate was settled amicably
  
• 31 August 2017 - Christopher resigns as director of the Tolkien Estate board
  
• 3 November 2017 - News that the Estate and WB TV have been shopping rights for a TV show leak. This article says that Amazon and Netflix are still in the running, but HBO "passed awhile back" because the finances were "insane".
  
• 13 November 2017 - Amazon announces the deal for the show
  

From this information, I assume that the goal of jointly shopping TV show rights were a part of the settlement agreement in July - while it is possible that WB and the Estate didn't start discussing a potential deal until September (after Christopher stepped down), it seems incredibly unlikely the Estate (sans Christopher) would be able to hammer out a plan with WB, shop it to multiple major studios, and have one of them step away "awhile back", and then sign a deal all in a two month window.

I strongly feel Christopher knew of these plans and could have stopped them by remaining director, but chose to step down and let the next generation move forward. I don't know for certain, and I have no idea how he felt about it, but the timeline seems pretty concrete.