On today’s earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery said that it had reached an agreement with the owners of the Middle-earth saga’s rights to make more The Lord of the Rings-based films. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson and the subsequent prequel trilogy based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit were both first released by WBD’s New Line Cinema.
WBD entered into a contract with Embracer Group AB, which recently purchased Middle-earth Enterprises from The Saul Zaentz Company and now has the rights to produce Lord of the Rings films and other kinds of media.
While The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King from 2003 will be the last new Lord of the Rings film, there is already a Lord of the Rings TV program that is now showing on streaming television. The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuted on Prime Video last year. Amazon has already committed to developing and releasing five seasons of the series, so it will be available for a long time and may compete with any Lord of the Rings Movies made in the coming years.
Nevertheless, The Rings of Power is a prequel trilogy that takes place tens of thousands of years before the events depicted in the original books and movies. These planned Warner Bros. films might theoretically recreate the films with a new cast or, in certain cases, expand upon them with sequels.
The cumulative worldwide box office for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies was $5.8 billion.