onthetrail wrote:

@Trotter thanks for posting.

I immediately wondered if the Warner announcement was related to the SZ news rather than anything else going on in the Tolkien world (Amazon).

I have been thinking about the price tag SZ have attached to this and I can't help feeling they are wildly over valuing these rights.

Anyone coming in with the view to producing a new film series would be fighting a losing financial battle due to the rights costs (if SZ manage to attract a buyer at $2b of course).

Well, assuming the public appetite for Tolkien related adaptations remains high 2B doesn't seem like a losing venture if whoever acquires these rights plans to create something akin to a recurring film series over years and even decades.

Seems to me like the TCU (Tolkien Cinematic Universe) would pull in well north of 2B over the long term.

Warner Brothers have a license to make any movies relating to the LOTR/H rights that Saul Zaentz own. So WB cannot prevent the SZ sale, nor do they have any ownership of any of those rights... whomever buys the rights from SZ, will just start receiving the license fees from WB, and will have to honor the agreement that SZ/WB signed, until it expires or is up for renewal.

WB's license agreement says that they have to keep making movies every few years, or the license falls back to SZ for them to auction off again to the next studio willing to make more movies. SZ and WB are in dispute around whether WB has stuck to those terms (it has been a long while since the third Hobbit movie was released!) so it makes sense that settling that dispute will clear the waters for the SZ rights sale, of course.

If WB end up losing the license, then I think the rights are actually worth more - some other studio will want to remake LOTR and pay a lot to do so, which WB clearly isn't interested in doing.

The whole point of the $2bn valuation is that you get the film rights, if WB have the film rights or may have the film rights, then I can't see why anybody would pay that for SZ, as they can't make the films themselves.

If this ends up in court and drags on for years and years then the value of the film rights also diminishes, as Tolkien's works become Public Domain by 2044, you may only get the rights for 10 years.

SZ own the film rights. WB have a license to crank out films, and pay money hand over fist to the rights holders for that license.

A new film (from WB or anyone else) every couple of years will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in license revenue to SZ. SZ wants to sell that revenue stream to someone else for a lump sum up front - it doesn't matter if WB is the one making the movies or if someone else is.

It's like a landlord wanting to sell the building. There's a (profitable) tenant paying rent, with a lease for the next couple of years. Does that make the building worthless? No! The building is generating income from the tenant. If the tenant leaves, the landlord can find a new one (and bump up the rent too, as the neighborhood is so much more popular now than when the lease was signed). Buildings with existing tenants are sold to new owners all the time.

Plus the fact that AAA video games are a much, much larger market than movie rights at this point. SZ is probably getting more than half that $2B valuation from those rights rather than the movie rights.

Mr. Underhill wrote:

Seems to me like the TCU (Tolkien Cinematic Universe) would pull in well north of 2B over the long term.

I've always thought that eventually Middle-earth would end up receiving the Marvel and Star Wars treatment. It's still sad to see it put in those terms.

Aelfwine wrote:

"The movies brought millions of people to Tolkien"

Did they, though? They certainly brought "millions of people" to Peter Jackson; but is that the same as bringing them to Tolkien?

To the extent that the Jackson films brought people to read Tolkien's book, that's great. But how many more people, having seen the movies, will think they "know" The Lord of the Rings, and so don't feel any need to read Tolkien's book? (Here's a hint: how many of you have read The Wizard of Oz, and how many have seen the movie?) The Jackson movies fundamentally misrepresent Tolkien in so many ways, that I cannot consider the two equivalent, or even, fundamentally, consonant.

This is totally anecdotal, but I can't count the number of people I know who watched the movies first then read the books on two hands and two feet. Heck, I watched the films first!

I'm not sure the Wizard of Oz is a great comparison. How many folks have you heard say "the book was better" in discussions of the film? How many (these days) even know it was a book? So far as popular culture is concerned, the film stands tall on its own technical and artistic merit, eclipsing the book.

PJ's original trilogy was cinematically ground breaking as well, but was never so far divorced from its source material in the public mind as is Wizard of Oz. Most people knew it came from a book, and there were (are) still plenty of OG Tolkien fans around to tell neophytes "the book was better". PJ himself seemed keen on reminding people "the finger that points to the moon is not the moon".

Morinehtar wrote:

Mr. Underhill wrote:

Seems to me like the TCU (Tolkien Cinematic Universe) would pull in well north of 2B over the long term.

I've always thought that eventually Middle-earth would end up receiving the Marvel and Star Wars treatment. It's still sad to see it put in those terms.

I'm just taking the approach that this is all fan fiction, and fully intend to ignore it. I have no real interest in any of the Cinematic Universes. They exist to spew out as much content as possible and most of it is - to my mind - drivel. At least a Middle-earth universe won't be about people in rubber suits with super powers, but it still has no real appeal to me. If I wanted fan fiction, I could make it up myself and have the joy of creation.

Caudimordax wrote:

This is totally anecdotal, but I can't count the number of people I know who watched the movies first then read the books on two hands and two feet. Heck, I watched the films first!

For those in my school, PJ's LOTR films introduced us to Tolkien. After watching the movies we read the books, excited to find the differences between the books and the movies and discuss them with each other. With the years I've become more critical of the movies, especially the changes made to Faramir. However, I still think they have some value and are good movies on their own right. The Hobbit movies on the other hand...

Stu wrote:

I'm just taking the approach that this is all fan fiction, and fully intend to ignore it. I have no real interest in any of the Cinematic Universes. They exist to spew out as much content as possible and most of it is - to my mind - drivel.

Fan fiction is a good way to put it, I feel the same way. Fan fiction pushed by millions of dollars. However, the public mind is often swayed by what is portrayed in films and video games. Good (or successful) fan fiction can help new generations discover the books (for example many discovered The Witcher books thanks to the video games), but if it's bad it can drive people away. My main concern is if they start spewing out content every year or multiple times a year, it could reach a point where the public is overwhelmed by it and many will not be able or willing to discern between the highly publicized fan fiction and what Tolkien actually wrote.

Morinehtar wrote:

Fan fiction is a good way to put it, I feel the same way. Fan fiction pushed by millions of dollars. However, the public mind is often swayed by what is portrayed in films and video games. Good (or successful) fan fiction can help new generations discover the books (for example many discovered The Witcher books thanks to the video games), but if it's bad it can drive people away. My main concern is if they start spewing out content every year or multiple times a year, it could reach a point where the public is overwhelmed by it and many will not be able or willing to discern between the highly publicized fan fiction and what Tolkien actually wrote.

To some degree it doesn't really matter, I suppose. The fan fiction doesn't make the original material go away, and whether future people bother to read the books (or don't because the fanfic is awful, or because they enjoy the fanfic but it is nothing like the books) - it doesn't have any particular impact on me, personally. So whilst none of this stuff is for me - and I'm irked because it is one of several factors that have pretty much killed Tolkien book collecting for me - I can certainly just ignore it for the most part and life will continue!

No doubt though, Tolkien's legacy will be packaged for the masses, laden with endless crappy merchandise and environmentally disastrous. The movies were bad enough for generating "polystone" landfill.

Stu wrote:

No doubt though, Tolkien's legacy will be packaged for the masses, laden with endless crappy merchandise and environmentally disastrous. The movies were bad enough for generating "polystone" landfill.

Just look at how many listings are already in the store for TV Tie-in books...packaged for the masses indeed.