Middle-earth Enterprises

Middle-earth Enterprises, originally founded as Tolkien Enterprises, a company is ( according to the American doing business as) The Saul Zaentz Company. She holds and marketed worldwide rights to JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Seat is Berkeley ( California). Tolkien Enterprises has been renamed to Middle-Earth Enterprises, 2010.

Middle-earth Enterprises has the rights to the titles of books, names of characters, places, objects and events as well as individual quotes and expressions. The company sells licenses to these rights to companies from all sectors of the media who wish to publish works with respect to the Tolkiensche universe.

Tolkien had originally sold the rights to United Artists in 1968, of which Zaentz then in 1976 took over. 1978 Zaentz produced a first film adaptation of Lord of the Rings directed by Ralph Bakshi, 2001-2003 Peter Jackson turned a trilogy ( The Fellowship, The Two Towers, The Return of the King ) under license from Tolkien Enterprises. To this end, in 2004 there was a legal dispute with New Line Cinema over more than $ 20 million, because the distribution of income was not released. It came to an unpublished agreement out of court.

The license for pen & paper role playing games was awarded to ICE for the system MERS since the early 80s. In 1997 the license was withdrawn and awarded role-playing game in the wake of remake for the system to Decipher Lord of the Rings.

Furthermore seemed and still seems a variety of other Middle-earth products such as computer games, board games, metal miniatures and merchandising under license.