The new owners of “The Lord of the Rings” want the franchise to be as big as Marvel or “Star Wars”

“The Lord of the Rings” is one of the most famous and beloved franchises in history. With the recent premiere of this universe’s spin-off series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, The life of this fantasy saga has resumed forcefully, but it promises to win even more, to the point that its new owners intend to reach the numbers of two of the most successful sagas in the history of cinema: Marvel and ‘Star Wars’. He will try to do this by expanding his universe beyond movies, series and books.

About two months ago it became official that Swedish video game company Embracer Group acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, which owns the rights to the Middle-earth universe intellectual property catalog and worldwide rights. to the literary trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit”. The man who brokered the sale of this business revealed new information about the deal. He points out that the financial terms of the same were not shared, but that Embracer Group will obtain the rights to films, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and theater productions. In addition, the possibility of obtaining the rights to literary works related to Middle-earth licensed by the Tolkien Estate, a legal organization that controls and manages the property of JRR Tolkien, and HarperCollins, a publishing house, is under consideration.

Thomas Dey, CEO, President and Founder of ACF, a leading international investment bank, shared his views on the situation at MIPCOM (International Program Communications Market): “I think this resource has the ability to reach the size of Marvel and ‘Star Wars’. Someone just needed to have the belief that this can be as ambitious as possible. “

Immersion in Middle-earth

According to Dey, this agreement is a reflection of a great change taking place in the world of television and film. Think about going and looking “tranquility and escape” a “investment experience”where Embracer has a good position to reach this new stage with an advantage. As the president of ACF points out, it seems that Embracer’s priority is to focus on the video game sector: “There is talk of metaverses, but video games have already created one: you disappear for 10 hours and you are active in that environment. So I think we will devote ourselves to that entertainment for the next decade and look for new ways of doing it.”

But Dey is not only closed to this sector, he also thinks that they will have many opportunities to create different transmedia projects on the universe of ‘The Lord of the Rings’which could include adventures in all kinds of formats, sectors and platforms, enriching the world of Middle-earth more and more.