Big news about Lord of the Rings: Christopher Tolkien has resigned, scramble for LOTR rights incoming.

Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R., has resigned as director of the Tolkien Estate. Under his tenure, the Tolkien Estate has tightly controlled licensing and adaptations of Tolkien's work. This is why, for example, the Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War games couldn't call themselves "Lord of the Rings" games.

Now that he's out, the Tolkien Estate is expected to be more liberal with their approach to adaptations of Tolkien's works. The result is already immediate; Amazon is making a LOTR TV show, and there is expected to be a mad scramble for adaptation rights for all sorts of media, including almost certainly video games. We could be about to see a whole new wave of LOTR content in the coming years.

What do you guys think about this? Got any wishlist in mind? For me, I would love to see Sega pick up a deal to make a Total War: Middle Earth game. I think once CA are done with Warhammer and if they still want to get their hands into more fictional Total War games, which I strongly suspect they do, Lord of the Rings would be perfect next move.

Dang, I loved the direction of the early material. Im gonna take a guess and say disney will make a play for the rights.....HARD

this is terrible news probably

A milking of epic proportions is about to commence. As much as I love Tolkien's world and believe that there is great potential to tell many great stories be it in movie or video game format, I doubt anyone has a clear and meaningful vision about it apart from maximizing profits.

From another "fandom" series:

Lord of the rings is cool, can't ever get enough. The more the better.

Summed up nicely.

They weren't already "liberal" with their usage already? We had a bunch of video games when the movie/s were coming out, arguably one of the better MMOs out there is a LOTR game, and how many movies? Too many, one could argue.

However, wWhen you said Total War and LOTR, let's just say I ji---well, you know how it goes.

Total War and fictitious groups go surprisingly well together; Warhammer is arguably my favorite installment since Shogun and Rome.

Well, considering Jackson took the shortest book and stretched it into three movies, I'd say people were being liberal already with the franchise.

Yep... let the milking commence. Going to be like Star Wars I assume.

Prepare for Aragorn: An Origins Movie as well as about every other Fellowship character and more.

Including the Hobbit Trilogy?

Does this mean we’ll finally see black elves/humans/dwarves?

The books will always be around and I already have mine. I don't really care who gets the movie rights because they tend to butcher the books, anyway.

As for the games based off LotR...... I have yet to play one. For some reason, I'm not interested in Tolkien products unless they adhere to the books. The one exception is making new material without altering the canon aspects of the book.

there's already black person the middle earth games.

@TheShadowLord07: progress!

I guess all the fat corporate sharks will be joining the feeding frenzy to grab whatever tasty morsel they can, because you know they can smell profits from ten miles off when it comes to lucrative franchise opportunities. I cannot deny that I enjoyed the LOTR film trilogy, and that LOTR: War in the North was an enjoyable game, but this may not end well. There could be a rash of bad cash-ins in the wake of this. Much now depends on who takes the reins of the Tolkien Estate, and how far they are willing to go to exploit the name and setting.

My reaction as well. Time to milk another franchise.

I have no high hopes whoever might be tasked to direct it.

Even PJ managed to make 3 very long substance-free movies out of The Hobbit.

As for videogames, I was never a fan of them (even though LOTR is my favourite "movie", love all the lore, have read Silmarillion as well, bla bla).

Making a Silmarillion movie RIGHT NOW.

Enter EA and their giant wallet. We won't see a good LOTR game ever again.

My hope is that we would some day get a single player RPG set in the LOTR universe. That's been my dream.

We have to prepare for the worst. Disney buys LOTR and then gives EA the license to make LOTR games.

In an age of companies buying exclusive rights to licenses, it's always good to be an optimist.

Ya time to milk all the sheep who flock to a name :)

Lord of the rings strategy games could totally work:

Also, I kinda like how Shadow of War/Mordor aren't directly tied into the movies. So it can take its own creative liberties to make for a better game, and we don't get constant LOTR movie characters stopping by to say hi

Hopefully the new leads will be smart enough not to saturate the market with LOTR stuff so people don't get tired of them.

But yeah, do give me a LOTR strategy game. Pretty please

Like Star Wars, am I right? :P