The news that Christopher Tolkien has stepped down at the age of 93 from his post as director of the Tolkien estate, along with the amicable resolution of a long-running legal action between the estate and Warner brothers, means good news for fans of high fantasy. The recently announced “Lord of the Rings” TV series that will air on Amazon is just the beginning. The Tolkien Estate will now be free to monetarize the entirety of the author’s body of work, including “The Silmarillion.”

The Christopher Tolkien – Peter Jackson feud.

While both the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the subsequent “The Hobbit” series of films were a great hit with fans and critics, Christopher Tolkien hated them, according to Screen Rant.

He believed that Peter Jackson dumbed down his father’s elegant stories and turned them into action/adventure films to cultivate young audiences. While the film rights to most famous works of J.R.R. Tolkien had been sold back in the 1960s, Tolkien refused to sell any other rights, especially to “The Silmarillion,” the epic series of stories that served as a prequel to “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.” J.R.R. Tolkien had not completed the work by the time of his death in 1973, and Christopher Tolkien has been finished the story and publishing them as a series of books ever since.

Get ready for Middle Earth and a film and TV franchise.

Many media observers suggest that Christopher Tolkien’s departure is going to open the floodgates for a whole slew of Tolkien-based works, making Middle Earth a franchise similar to “Star Wars” and the Marvel Comics Universe.

A series of “Silmarillion” films directed by Peter Jackson will be just the beginning. Look for spinoff TV shows and movies, Middle Earth theme parks, action figures and virtual reality games, among other marketing products.

Tolkien purists are not going to be happy. However, people who are keen to jump into the Middle Earth universe, create some media magic and make lots of money are going to be very happy.

“The Lord of the Rings" constitute the most beloved and widely read series of high fantasy novels of the 20th Century, if not of all time. Sales of the books have proven steady ever since they were discovered by a mass audience in the 1960s. Tolkien’s stories have also proven to be an outsized influence for other writers of high fantasy, such as David Eddings, Raymond Feist, and George R. R. Martin, though the latter’s “Game of Thrones” novels have made him the anti-Tolkien for its cynical and unromantic view of a fantasy medieval universe.
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