Entertainment rag Variety is reporting that The Saul Zaentz Company is set to sell all of its Tolkien IP.

The company holds, according to its site, “exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandising, stage and other rights in certain literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.”

It originally acquired the rights in 1976 in an arrangement with United Artists. It subsequently licensed rights to filmmaker Ralph Bakshi for an animated film (released in 1978) and for director Peter Jackson to produce live-action trilogies of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Variety states that the sale could be worth at least US $2 billion, “based on recent high valuations for top-tier IP and content producers”. ACF Investment Bank is currently shopping a deal around with a number of prospective buyers.

Read more about the news over on Variety.

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• Tolkien
• Tolkien Estate

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As is to be expected, the internet, our discussion forums, and comments to our story from yesterday are abuzz with the news broken by Variety magazine yesterday of talks between Warner Brothers and Amazon to make a series adaptation based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Since there are many outstanding questions, we thought we’d go back over some of the background related to the movie and television rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, as well as relate some additional information also published yesterday at Deadline Hollywood.

Continue reading “LOTR TV series: some background and more information”

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• Fellowship of the Ring
• Hobbit Book
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• LotR Books
• Return of the King
• Television
• The Hobbit
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Two Towers
• Tolkien
• Tolkien Estate
• Warner Bros.

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Tyler writes: It seems Tolkien Enterprises has changed their name to Middle-earth Enterprises. Their site is now www.middleearth.com, and you can go there for more information.

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• Tolkien

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