Latest news on Amazon's "Lord of the Rings" series

[Rhun charioteer]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Perhaps so, but Baillie and Michael George are still on the board, and the impression I get of Adam is that his attitude is rather like his father's.

Simon on the other hand....

If the Amazon series does well, it wouldn’t surprise me if certain members of the estate were contacted by various corporate conglomerates asking to say change the will or sell the rights to the Silmarillion, having developed the notion the Tolkien family or at least its younger members have no interest in keeping the IP under their ownership either indefinitely or whenever it enters public domain.

It’s happened before with other estates.

I don’t expect anything like the above will happen for at least the next five years.

But I am genuinely worried the doors may have swung open to the silmarillion being adapted.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Rhun charioteer

If the Amazon series does well, it wouldn’t surprise me if certain members of the estate were contacted by various corporate conglomerates asking to say change the will or sell the rights to the Silmarillion, having developed the notion the Tolkien family or at least its younger members have no interest in keeping the IP under their ownership either indefinitely or whenever it enters public domain.

It’s happened before with other estates.

I don’t expect anything like the above will happen for at least the next five years.

But I am genuinely worried the doors may have swung open to the silmarillion being adapted.

At this point it's all speculation, since we have no clue what the new legal arrangements or dramatis personae are going to be. Remember, CRT never relinquished the position of literary executor, and presumably bestowed it in his will, but to whom we have no idea. Nor do we know who is going to take his seat on the Board, nor who might replace Priscilla (age 90) before long; nor whether there might be yet another re-organization.

In other words, it's way too soon to tell.

(Another complication- at least with regard to the Silmarillion, a very solid case could be made that it was co-authored by JRRT and CRT, which adds another dimension to any consideration of rights sales).