A television series of JRR Tolkien’s classic series of fantasy novels could be in the works.
According to US reports, the Tolkien Estate and Warner Bros are quoting up to £189 million for the rights to the Lord of the Rings with an aim to turn it into a series.
It has been claimed by Deadline Hollywood that Amazon, Netflix and HBO have been approached about the series so far.
Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos is said to be ‘personally involved’ with negotiations, the Daily Mail reports, citing Variety.
It comes after JRR Tolkien’s family, including daughter Priscilla, 88, and son Christopher, 92, and publishers of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, HarperCollins, settled a £62 million lawsuit with Warner Bros over the licensing of online games, slot machines and other gambling-related merchandise based on the author’s books.
It was not revealed what the final settlement fee was.
Tolkien’s estate had accused Warner Bros – which produced director Peter Jackon’s live-action feature film adaptations – of violating a 1969 agreement allowing the sale ‘tangible’ merchandise, by associating the books with the “morally-questionable (and decidedly non-literary) world of online and casino gambling.”
It said this “outraged Tolkien’s devoted fan base” and irreparably harmed the legacy of the English author, who died in 1973 at the age of 81.
Mr Tolkien sold the rights to the books in 1969 for £100,000 to settle a tax bill.
Since then, the movies went on to gross more than £2.2 billion for each of the big-screen trilogies for The Lord of the Rings, released from 2001 to 2003, and The Hobbit, released from 2012 to 2014, worldwide according to Box Office Mojo.
The copyright lawsuit was subsequently filed in November 2012.
In addition, filming is underway for the highly anticipated J.R.R. Tolkien biopic.
It will chart the story of Tolkien’s earlier years as a love lorn soldier who returned from the Great War – which he later used as inspiration for The Lord Of The Rings.
Tolkien will be filmed across the north of England including Cheshire, the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port and the Porters Row Cottages.
