‘Lord of the Rings’ & ‘The Hobbit’ Video Game Rights Up For Sale

Video games based on the classic novels Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit might be on the horizon as the rights for the series are reportedly up for sale.

Saul Zaentz Co. is looking to sell its holdings of the series, which would include the rights to use the franchise for movies, merchandise, theme parks and video games. The properties are estimated to be worth at least $2 billion.

This comes as Amazon is set to release its own series based on the Lord of the Rings novels, with many speculating that they might be interested in purchasing the rights to the franchise.

Warner Bros. still has partial rights to the series, as they are preparing to release an animated Lord of the Rings movie. Warner Bros. and Zaentz Co. are allegedly involved in arguments about who controls what portions of the franchise.

The possibility of a video game series being created is an interesting one as high-production licensed games have started to become popular recently. Disney found success licensing out Spider-Man to Sony, allowing them to create their own game set in the Marvel universe, and have recently begun to license out the Star Wars property to several developers.

No announcements have been made about the sale of the series, so any potential projects that can spawn from this are most likely years away.