The Embracer Group, who are dilatory buying immoderate and each video crippled steadfast and workplace connected the market, conscionable announced that they person purchased Middle-earth Enterprises, the institution that owns the rights to astir of J.R.R. Tolkien’s astir important works, including Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Some background: Middle-earth Enterprises utilized to beryllium a part of The Saul Zaentz Company, a Hollywood accumulation workplace that successful 1976 managed to prime up the rights to beauteous overmuch everything to bash with Tolkien but the work of the books themselves. Those rights were utilized to marque the 1978 animated feature, and ever since person lone been licensed retired to different companies—an cognition overseen by Middle-earth Enterprises—never afloat sold.

That means everything from Peter Jackson’s films to EA’s video games to Amazon’s upcoming TV bid were lone borrowing the Lord of the Rings license. Ownership inactive laic with The Saul Zaentz Company. Or, it did, until now.

The Saul Zaentz Company floated the merchantability of their rights earlier this twelvemonth for an eye-popping $2 billion, and portion Embracer’s acquisition terms wasn’t disclosed successful their announcement, you’d presume the terms they paid would beryllium determination successful that ballpark. [Update: in a abstracted announcement, Embracer accidental the full outgo for each the acquisitions they made contiguous was SEK8.2 billion, which is astir USD$770 million].

As the announcement says, the acquisition covers beauteous overmuch everything you’d subordinate with Lord of the Rings beyond the publishing of the books themselves (whose rights are held by HarperCollins), including:

Key upcoming works acceptable successful Middle-earth, successful which Middle-earth Enterprises has fiscal interests, see the much-heralded Amazon bid The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power which volition premiere connected September 2, 2022, acceptable thousands of years earlier The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; the animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (Warner Bros), acceptable for merchandise successful 2024, and the mobile crippled The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth (Electronic Arts).

As for what Embracer mightiness privation to bash with the licence successful the future, that’s spelled retired successful the property merchandise arsenic well:

Other opportunities see exploring further movies based connected iconic characters specified arsenic Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum, Galadriel, Eowyn and different characters from the literate works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and proceed to supply caller opportunities for fans to research this fictive satellite done merchandising and different experiences.

With Embracer owning some a ton of video crippled studios and besides committee crippled institution Asmodee (who successful crook ain Fantasy Flight), you tin expect a ton of licensed games to travel suit arsenic good (note that Asmodee already ain the Lord of the Rings licence for committee games).

Of people it wouldn’t beryllium an Embracer announcement with quality that, alongside the Middle-earth Enterprises purchase, the institution besides bought a clump of different worldly today, including carnal transcript specialists Limited Run Games, Tripwire Interactive (Killing Floor, Chivalry), Tuxedo Labs (Teardown) and, successful a bizarrely poetic determination fixed the buyers successful question, Japanese workplace Tatsujin. Their brag is Masahiro Yuge, a co-founder of Toaplan, the developers of Zero Wing, the crippled that the “All your basal beryllium to us” meme comes from.