Middle-earth Enterprises

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Middle-earth Enterprises , originally founded as Tolkien Enterprises , is a company (under the American doing business as ) of The Saul Zaentz Company . It holds and markets the rights to JRR Tolkien's works The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit worldwide . It is based in Berkeley , California . Tolkien Enterprises was renamed Middle-Earth Enterprises in 2010 .

Middle-earth Enterprises owns the rights to the titles of the books, the names of the characters, places, objects and events as well as individual quotations and expressions. The company sells licenses to these rights to companies from all media sectors who wish to publish works relating to the Tolkien universe .

background

Tolkien had originally sold the rights to United Artists in 1968 , from whom Zaentz took them over in 1976. In 1978 Zaentz produced a first film version of The Lord of the Rings directed by Ralph Bakshi , 2001-2003 Peter Jackson shot a trilogy ( The Companions , The Two Towers , The Return of the King ) under license from Tolkien Enterprises. To this end, there was a lawsuit with 2004 New Line Cinema on more than 20 million dollars , as the distribution of income was not clarified. An unpublished out-of-court settlement was reached.

The license for pen & paper role-playing games had been granted to ICE for the MERS system since the early 1980s . 1997 the license was withdrawn and given in the course of the remake to Decipher for the system The Lord of the Rings role-playing game .

In addition, a variety of other Middle-earth products such as computer games, board games, pewter miniatures, and merchandising items have appeared and are under license.

Allocated licenses (selection)

Tolkien Enterprises had issued licenses to the following companies until 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Middle-earth Enterprises. In: zaentz.com. Retrieved September 17, 2015 .
  2. Linda Kalin: Tolkien Enterprises. In: archive.org. Archived from the original on July 17, 2011 ; accessed on September 17, 2015 .
  3. ^ Brian J. Robb, Paul Simpson: Middle-earth Envisioned: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: On Screen, On Stage, and Beyond . Race Point Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-1-937994-27-3 ( books.google.com ).