If you dig down into it, it’s pretty complicated to discuss the rights situation surrounding “The Lord of the Rings” IP. Warner Bros. Discovery and Embracer are working together on feature films that have to be released in theaters. Amazon Studios is working on a TV franchise with ‘The Rings of Power’ that launched last year. And neither of those studios is allowed to collaborate to make it one cohesive universe. It’s a bit of a mess, even for those people who have knowledge of the situation. It’s going to be interesting to see how the average film and TV fan attempts to figure it out. Regardless, after the recent announcement that new ‘Lord of the Rings’ films are being developed that will seemingly compete with Amazon’s ‘Rings of Power’ series, the latter studio thinks fan enthusiasm will be enough to keep the franchise afloat. No ‘Rings’ oversaturation in the future, apparently.
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Speaking to Variety, Amazon Studios boss, Jennifer Salke was asked about the future of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” after the announcement that a rival studio is developing more feature films based on the franchise. As you might expect, she wasn’t going to admit that there is concern, but Salke does believe that the fans gained from Season 1 of ‘Rings of Power’ will sustain the TV side of things just fine, no matter what happens on the feature film side with Warner Bros. Discovery.
“We’ll see,” Salke said. “We love our original series. We’re extremely proud of it and invested long-term. So, we definitely think there’s enough fan love to sustain ours for a long time.”
When Salke said Amazon is invested “long-term,” she’s not lying. Much was already made about the $1 billion price tag that the company spent to land the rights and produce ‘The Rings of Power.’ In addition, Amazon is hoping that ‘Rings of Power’ will continue to be successful for a full five-year run and could possibly lead to more shows in the Tolkien universe. It’s just now Amazon isn’t the only game in town when it comes to “The Lord of the Rings” storytelling.
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Of course, it’s important to know that there are no definite plans coming out of the Warner Bros. Discovery announcement. At this point, we can only assume feature film plans are still very much in the future, and nothing will begin production anytime soon. So, you can likely expect that Amazon will get at least one more season of ‘The Rings of Power’ under its belt before any live-action competition. (Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to release an animated ‘Lord of the Rings’ spinoff film in 2024, however.)
For now, at least, Amazon Studios is mighty confident that the TV side of ‘Rings’ can exist just fine along with more feature films. We’ll just have to wait and see if that’s truly the case.