Copyright Absurdity Rules Over Amazon’s ‘The Rings Of Power’

from the just one-copyright-to-rule-them-all dept

J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” is one of the greatest-regarded and greatest-beloved modern day is effective of literature, not minimum thanks to Peter Jackson’s films dependent on the cycle. Offered that recognition, it’s no shock that there was interest in building variations of other Tolkien functions. The final result is “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”. According to Wikipedia:

Amazon purchased the tv rights for The Lord of the Rings for US$250 million in November 2017, building a five-season production motivation value at the very least US$1 billion. This would make it the most expensive television series ever manufactured.

A write-up on ScreenRant explains:

Tolkien chronicled tens of 1000’s of years of stories developing prior to The Lord of the Rings. Some of these tales were referenced in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings trilogy, including the Appendices at the finish of The Return of the King, but most of what is known about that further canon will come from other operates by Tolkien revealed following his loss of life, this kind of as The Silmarillion, which The Rings of Electrical power is not permitted to use for its own tale.

The reason, of course, is copyright, because Amazon only has the rights to use “The Lord of the Rings” textbooks, which include the appendices outlined higher than. As the ScreenRant write-up notes, this has forced the staff at the rear of “The Rings of Power” to appear up with clever but relatively convoluted options in purchase to reveal key things of the before Tolkien planet, with out drawing on forbidden supplies like “The Silmarillion“.

Some Tolkien admirers are not pleased about those divergences, but number of are mindful that copyright is to blame. The saga about new variations of the Tolkien epics is a best illustration of how copyright is not some thing that can help people today to create, but can act as a serious obstacle to it that need to be circumvented.

Observe me @glynmoody on Twitter, or Mastodon. At first posted to Walled Lifestyle.

Submitted Less than: copyright, creativeness, j.r.r. tolkien, lord of the rings, rings of power, silmarillion

Corporations: amazon