Just weeks before The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrived on Prime Video, Embracer Group announced that they had acquired Middle-earth Enterprises.
The company now owns 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 mentioned potential 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 screen.
ACF Investment Bank CEO Thomas Day brokered the deal and was recently quoted (via Deadline) 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 quietly 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 unsure exactly 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. Whether that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen, though we're sure fans of Middle-earth won't be against seeing everything from video games to theme park rides based on the IP.
As for potential projects starring all those characters in an MCU-style series of movies, we're not quite so sure. 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.
Keep checking back here for updates.