The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[crazy canuck]

Ohhh, that significantly reduces my interest in this. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

it's fanfiction, and likely bad fanfic at that.

[Razgovory]

[Valmy]

Looks good until 2:17 in and then it becomes The Hobbit

They saw all the groaning at the ridiculous Legolas scenes from the LOTR and thought: let's do more of that, that is what people really loved about those movies. So they made three movies of it for The Hobbit.

Might as well keep it going I guess.

I watched The Hobbit. I guess I will have to ask myself if I am desperate for more of that kind of thing.

[celedhring]

I'm hugely skeptical of the "we don't have the rights to the Silmarillion and thus we had to change things" claim. The Tolkien Estate has been involved in the production so they at least have their blessing on mentioning or not mentioning certain things. Otherwise, this would be a minefield from an IP law perspective. The lawyers at any company I have worked for would set the cameras on fire before letting the shooting go ahead with such a precarious IP position.

EDIT: Here are the quotes from the showrunner. Emphasis mine.

"We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, or any of those other books...We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkien-ian and gelled with the experts' and the estate's understanding of the material."

"There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to. As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with."

So they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, but they can't "egergiously contradict" it, and they have to gel with the rights holder understanding of the material. Might still be terrible, mind.

[Valmy]

Wait so this entire series is solely based on the appendix to Return of the King?

[Grey Fox]

Wait so this entire series is solely based on the appendix to Return of the King?

More on the concepts from that appendix.

[crazy canuck]

I'm hugely skeptical of the "we don't have the rights to the Silmarillion and thus we had to change things" claim. The Tolkien Estate has been involved in the production so they at least have their blessing on mentioning or not mentioning certain things. Otherwise, this would be a minefield from an IP law perspective. The lawyers at any company I have worked for would set the cameras on fire before letting the shooting go ahead with such a precarious IP position.

EDIT: Here are the quotes from the showrunner. Emphasis mine.

"We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, or any of those other books...We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkien-ian and gelled with the experts' and the estate's understanding of the material."

"There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to. As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with."

So they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, but they can't "egergiously contradict" it, and they have to gel with the rights holder understanding of the material. Might still be terrible, mind.

I think all that estate involvement means is there is not complete artistic freedom.

[viper37]

I'm hugely skeptical of the "we don't have the rights to the Silmarillion and thus we had to change things" claim. The Tolkien Estate has been involved in the production so they at least have their blessing on mentioning or not mentioning certain things. Otherwise, this would be a minefield from an IP law perspective. The lawyers at any company I have worked for would set the cameras on fire before letting the shooting go ahead with such a precarious IP position.

EDIT: Here are the quotes from the showrunner. Emphasis mine.

"We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-Earth, or any of those other books...We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkien-ian and gelled with the experts' and the estate's understanding of the material."

"There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to. As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with."

So they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, but they can't "egergiously contradict" it, and they have to gel with the rights holder understanding of the material. Might still be terrible, mind.

It's complicated:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/19/embracer-lord-of-the-rings/

[Jacob]

100% not interested.

I wish the people who are interested joy in watching, but yeah... hard pass from em.

[Threviel]

I want to se Numenor in all its glory

This shitfest will make filming of Silmarillion impossible for a generation 

[The Minsky Moment]

The Tolkien IP rights situation is complicated.  Film rights to the Hobbit and LotR triology (only) were sold in 1969, along with some limited TV and merchandising rights. The terms of those contracts are known since the contracts were disclosed in civil lawsuits. However, there were also confidential settlements between the Tolkien Estate and the film rights holders, the terms of which are not known.  We also don't know the precise terms of the Amazon deal.

It appears that Amazon acquired rights from the Estate and the Estate has a production credit on the Amazon project.  The Estate presumably still owns all rights in the Simarillion; HOWEVER, I believe the film rights holders in the Hobbit/LOTR have some rights in the appendices to LOTR which IIRC includes Second Age content.

Regardless, this is a pretty silly situation and one would have hoped the rights issues could have been worked despite all the legal minefields related to the Tolkien IP.

[The Minsky Moment]

A couple more data points.
Under the original 1969 agreements, the Estate retained most TV rights, but the purchaser acquired an option to produce a TV series based on Hobbit/LOTR content, exercisable under certain conditions.

In 2012, the Estate was in a protracted lawsuit with the film rights holder over various issues, focusing on digital content and merchandising rights.

The lawsuit settled in June 2017 - terms are confidential.  The Amazon deal was done in November 2017.

It's reasonable to infer that Amazon was waiting for a settlement to clarify the legal status of the IP and that their deal is built around whatever the terms of the confidential settlement may be.  So any analysis of the situation is a guessing game.

[Darth Wagtaros]

So they don't really have access to the full Silmarillion, or Hobbits.  Some of htem haven't read the books, or even seen the movies.  THe trailers look like generic fantasy, the kind of crap that Hollywood has churned out for decades but without even the charm of something silly like Sword and the Sorcerer (charm as in its not horrible). 

To make it worse, my Youtube feed is full of reviewers gonig beserk because it looks like shit.  I want my Youtube feed back.

[Tonitrus]

So the series is "Adventures of Young Galadriel"?  Meh.