Report: Warner Bros. lording over Rings IP

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Mar 12, 2009 4:39 pm PT

Variety reports film studio's game arm now has control of Peter Jackson fantasy film license long held by Electronic Arts; parties involved decline comment.

When The Lord of the Rings: Conquest arrived on store shelves in mid-January, it faced a tepid reception. In the wake of lukewarm reviews, the game saw only 170,000 units sold domestically through the end of January, according to figures from the NPD Group. It fared particularly badly on the PC and DS, selling less than 6,000 units in the US on either platform during its first two weeks of release.

"On to the Warner Bros. lot!"

Today, Variety aired a possible reason for Conquest's poor reception--namely, that the game might have been rushed to release. According to the Hollywood trade, Electronic Arts' license to make games based on director Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films expired on December 31, 2008--just two weeks before the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC game shipped to stores.

Variety reports that after the new year, rights for the Rings films reverted to movie studio Warner Bros., an assertion neither EA nor Warner Bros. would comment on. If true, though, the move comes just almost exactly one year after New Line Cinema, the semi-autonomous studio that produced Jackson's multibillion-dollar-grossing Rings trilogy, was folded into Warner Bros. by the pair's corporate parent, Time Warner Inc. (Turbine's massively multiplayer title Lord of the Rings Online is based on the original novels by author J.R.R. Tolkien and is not covered by the EA-Warner deal.)

The expiration of EA's game license also makes sense, given Warner Bros.'s increasing push to become a game-industry player. Four years prior to New Line's absorption, Warner Bros. relaunched its games arm, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The past two years have seen Time Warner pour more resources into the division, which has shifted from merely overseeing licensing game IPs to codistributing such games as Tomb Raider: Underworld and self-developing games like the just-released Watchmen: The End Is Nigh. The publisher also owns developers Monolith Productions and Traveller's Tales, makers of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and Lego Batman, respectively.

102 Comments

  • hitmanxmk

    Posted Nov 26, 2009 4:03 am PT

    Ok, so does anyone got any other news that could point us to more specific details about "The White Council" game? Is it going to be released or project has been abandoned?

  • InuHanyou1701

    Posted Nov 25, 2009 1:21 am PT

    Freaking lame. I hate EA as much as the next guy but with this happening, you pretty much can't fine BFME at ALL anymore. You either have to pay a stupid amount of money or go through multiple annoyances to get it.

  • blackwing55

    Posted Nov 1, 2009 10:55 pm PT

    I wonder if they will ever make a new lotr bfme III the second was one of the funniest rts i have played and can't wait tell a third

  • rhyseus

    Posted Sep 12, 2009 10:43 am PT

    applepod & rivano, you might want to check out www.lotr-tw.net

  • kamikazen

    Posted Sep 6, 2009 4:21 am PT

    LOTR rpg Oblivion style i really like 2 play this game!!!

  • applepod

    Posted Aug 22, 2009 12:49 pm PT

    Rivano - I completely agree with your LOTR Total War! That way we're certain of a good game.

  • Immortal_Sinner

    Posted Aug 17, 2009 3:38 am PT

    conquest sucks ! its the lamest game i ever played , i really like RPG's so i cant wait to see a none MMO RPG on my pc

  • SWfreak16

    Posted May 31, 2009 11:47 am PT

    I liked Conquest, even though it could have been better. Wasn't bad, but at the same time wasn't great.

  • T-o-m_1980

    Posted May 6, 2009 2:20 am PT

    i hope there gonna make an rpg oblivion style lotr game that would be awesome!

  • the_gamer_kid

    Posted Apr 5, 2009 1:06 pm PT

    With any bit of luck this will mean that the new LOTR games won't be pushed out to make quick cash

  • GodDemon

    Posted Mar 23, 2009 2:24 pm PT

    BFME IAND II WHERE MADE BY EA!
    They where good, so how is EA bad? They made the good, ROTK and TTT.
    It was pandemic that f***** up LOTR, although I think conquest was good.
    It was just conquest could have been better.

  • pigpen4483

    Posted Mar 21, 2009 1:18 pm PT

    they gotta bring back the hack n slash LOTR games

  • Rivarno

    Posted Mar 16, 2009 4:38 pm PT

    Off course you know what would be the best 'Rings' based game....Lord of the Rings - Total War.......an 'Oblivion' style game would rock as well, of course!

  • Shadow_Fire41

    Posted Mar 16, 2009 3:12 pm PT

    traveller's tales?
    for some reason i don't think this is a bad thing

  • mesc420

    Posted Mar 16, 2009 12:21 pm PT

    I wish Square-Enix or Bioware would get ahold of the license. Maybe then someone would make a good LOTR RPG?

  • DPhunkT

    Posted Mar 16, 2009 8:49 am PT

    I still want to see LOTR:The White Council to be released. An Oblivion-like action RPG taken place in the LOTR universe.

  • pajamas

    Posted Mar 15, 2009 8:23 am PT

    Let's have Lego LOTR!!! Yay!!! Imagine hobbits would only be 1 lego block thick.. lol.

  • m30w_cP

    Posted Mar 15, 2009 5:20 am PT

    This is stupid... the game was finished before the contract had expired. I'm sure when they get to court they will bring this up.

  • asteris_

    Posted Mar 15, 2009 3:19 am PT

    Do you think Warner Bros will release any game based on LOTR?

  • BloodMist

    Posted Mar 14, 2009 7:43 pm PT

    Well, the thing about the story is that pretty much everyone knows the story.However, you could have an RPG that has you do things outside of the main story, side stories, if you please, which is actually what LotRO does and does very well, and make a really nice single player RPG out of that.It could be open world style, or more traditional style and work very well.

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