3 ms·
> It's reasonable to surmise that they always intended to become an official work. Realistically, that was never going to happen either. It is exceedingly unc
by duskwuff 3y ago
> It's reasonable to surmise that they always intended to become an official work.
Realistically, that was never going to happen either.
It is exceedingly uncommon for any media franchise to accept story submissions "on spec", even in franchises which are less author-focused like films or TV series. For a literary series like LotR? Forget it. You might as well ask the Pope if you can write a new book of the Bible.
(This isn't to say that licensed works aren't a thing -- far from it! But they're almost always commissioned by the owner of the franchise, not on spec. There's rarely any lack of authors willing to write for a high-profile franchise.)
- DistractionRect 3y agoIndeed, that's kinda my point. It seems like a desperate attempt to force licensing talks, it was never going to happen without getting licensed, and licensing was probably never going to happen organically. It seems they were hoping they could win the suit and force licensing as part of the settlement, which would return the derivative work under Tolkien estate and allow Amazon to use it. In the other case, they were going to get shot down, but then they hoped that the lengthy process of examining the work would convince the estate it was a worthy sequel, and the Tolkien estate would take a cut of the book sales in return for officially licensing it. This was always going to end up in the courts, they probably thought suing first for infringement would be favorable to them rather than wait to get sued later.