16OctOctober 16, 2024
According to Jennifer Salke the head of Amazon/MGM Studios, it’s not off the menu.
That doesn’t mean it’s on the menu either. Salke is now trying to gaslight the public into believing that Amazon was happy with the results of Lord of the Ring: The Rings of Power’s second season. There is no way they could be. The minutes viewed is nowhere near what it was for the first season. They are having to attack the fans which automatically gets them positive coverage from the press. But does nothing to raise ad rates for the Rings of Power.
That matters now.
It is possible that it’s Bezos that’s doubling down.
The Embracer Group bought out the Saul Zaentz Company film, TV, and game rights to Tolkien’s work for a little under $400 million. This is surprisingly low for an evergreen property like Middle Earth. Or perhaps not surprising. The contract between J.R.R. Tolkien and Saul Zaentz was incredibly badly written. SZC has spent the last 50 years in court trying to get it straightened out.
I strongly suspect Embracer only bought up the rights in the first place because they were trying to sell themselves to Amazon and acquiring the rights to something Bezos had a rabid interest in seemed like a great sweetener.
This deal notoriously fell apart when Amazon started making big post-Covid cuts. Consequently, Embracer, which had leveraged itself into billions in debt buying up every studio on the planet, has been loading up their acquired studios with as much of their bad paper as legally possible and spinning them off. That would be a problem for Middle Earth Enterprises, it doesn’t have much of an income, it’s just a rights-holding entity. Sure they could do their load it up with debt and spin it off routine but it will go bankrupt almost immediately and then those rights go on the auction block where they will absolutely get bought up by someone, but Embracer won’t see any of that money.
There are however two possible buyers for Middle Earth Enterprises. Warner Brothers and Amazon.
Warner is interested in hanging on to the rights they have but right now they only have to keep making rights retainer stuff like that War of the Rohirrim cartoon that’s coming out soon. They might be interested in securing their rights permanently if the price is low enough.
Amazon on the other hand can throw a river of good money after bad. It just depends on whether they want to or not. According to Salke, they’re at least interested but she’s hedging her words.
That purchase would have to be approved by the BOD, and I suspect that Indra Nooyi and Judy McGrath are drumming their fingers impatiently when the subject comes up. Neither is likely to continue rewarding failure. McGrath is the one with a TV background.
As for buying Warner Brothers, I seriously doubt that will happen. It would give them the rights to Middle Earth immediately as well as Harry Potter and DC comics and none of that would be worth the fifty billion they’d have to spend. Besides, Disney would go screaming to the government for a start. Universal would join them.
It’s possible Amazon is going to buy it but it would be an incredibly bad idea.
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