Shortly before The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on Prime Video, Embracer Group announced that they had acquired Middle-earth Enterprises.
The company now holds the worldwide rights to motion pictures, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions relating to the iconic fantasy literary works The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Primarily a video game company, a press release announcing the news this past August teased possible plans for movies featuring "Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum, Galadriel, Eowyn and other characters." Now, it sounds like they're moving full steam ahead with a massive expansion of Middle-earth on our screens.
ACF Investment Bank CEO Thomas Day brokered the deal and was recently quoted (via SFFGazette.com) as saying, "I think this asset has the ability to get to [Marvel and Star Wars] scale. Someone just needs to have the belief for this to be as ambitious as it could be."
Embracer also acquired Dark Horse Comics late last year as well, and Day would go on to say, "Having 10,000 developers in the group means we are thinking about what we can do with the IP going forward and this justifies value for us. And then we have a number of amazing opportunities to do ‘transmedia’ projects. We can power creatives to succeed with their goals and dreams."
While we're not 100% sure what this means for The Rings of Power moving forward, Embracer clearly won't be sitting on its hands when it comes to The Lord of the Rings franchise. Only time will tell whether that's a good or bad thing, though we're sure fans of Middle-earth won't be against seeing everything from video games to theme park rides based on this IP.
As for potential projects starring all those characters in an MCU-style series of movies, we're not convinced. There are lots of other stories penned by Tolkien that could be told, though it makes sense why Embracer is quickly taking aim at the biggest names from The Lord of the Rings as they're sure to get the most attention.
Keep checking SFFGazette.com for the latest updates.