will another company get it?and can they use gw moulds?If so being abandoned by GW will be the best thing for the lotr sbg since 2003.I was at my gw and yes the metal models will be gone forever AND the sourcebooks. Is there a company that can even AFFORD the price new line will want?

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Let's fight in phalanx formation with more swordsmen and archers then pikes!
-Easterlings

It'll be a pretty dead franchise by then. The Hobbit just hasn't captured the public's imagination like Lord of the Rings has, we can debate the reasons, but it hasn't.

I doubt GW will renew the licence, and if they do for some reason, it'll only be to prevent another company getting their hands on it. They missed a golden opportunity with the Hobbit to draw back in a huge number of hobbyists, as well as arguably their best entry point for young kids new to a hobby like this. If they're not driving it now, they won't in 3 years time.

I don't see a bidding war happening either. Most other companies don't have the buying power of GW. However I can't see New Line letting a good deal go. They won't be in the same position then as they are now, when they are actively promoting a new series of films. If the WETA/Jackson team return to middle earth in any way then the stakes may be different, but I don't see that happening, again we can argue over why.

Knight Models, as we know, have some licencing rights. They are still molding in metal. This leads me to believe less about the cost of a licence, and more about GW secretly justifying higher profit margins, in a dwindling market.

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I have a question about models:
I can still see a nice range of miniatures on the GW site, and I think I can even order it to Holland where I live. But how long do they keep producing the Lotr miniatures? Or are they just selling out stocks now and when that is done they just stop making the models?

I doubt that.Such is GW's corporate culture, that I believe they'll prefer to just simply destroy/recycle all the existing moulds and resin masters, rather than sell them/the range to another Company and risk that company becoming successful enough to rival GW.



That depends.

After the hype of the Hobbit movies dissipates and the public/ the market's love for all things Tolkien fades, the value of a LOTR licence will fall. If New Line wants to continue selling the licence(s), then they'll need to adjust their expectations accordingly and charge significantly less, in which case there'll be more competition.

If however there is a real prospect of future films, such as the film rights to the Silmarillion and Children of Hurin being sold (which is unlikely to happen in the near future), then that will naturally prop up the value. Take the inter trilogy period between LOTR and The Hobbit. The film rights for the Hobbit had been sold, pre-production work was underway for a long time and it was known that PJ wanted to film the Hobbit. Even with a decade long delay, there was always a very real prospect that we would get a new set of films for The Hobbit, and so the licence remained valuable and GW retained it, at considerable cost, in the hopes of benefiting from a new film bubble like the LOTR bubble.

If there was never any prospect of the Hobbit being filmed, e.g. if the film rights remained with The Tolkien Estate (Christopher Tolkien is reportedly vehemently opposed to ALL the films of his father's work and he wants to block films of the Children of Hurin and the Silmarillion) then GW would have dropped the licence like a hot potato after the LOTR bubble burst and its profits began to fall.


Ideally my preference would be to split the licence into Wargame Rules, and a range of licenced miniatures.

Let one company write a set of wargaming rules systems, and another (maybe more than one) company produce ranges of miniatures. Make them cooperate and work together.

Getting more companies involved and giving them licences to produce LOTR miniatures and wargames means better competition and more variety and choice for the consumer. This way, no single company would have a monopoly on LOTR wargames and wargaming miniatures.

Gripping Beast does this with its various wargames systems. Gripping Beast produces whole ranges of miniatures, but outsources to another company, Studio Tomahawk, which writes and publishes the actual Wargames. And it works quite well for them.



But the Wargaming market is growing, not dwindling. Its GW's share of that market which is dwindling.

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Don't forget that GW Licence is mainly based on the films. Mithril miniatures have a licence to produce Hobbit/LOTR collectors miniatures since the 1980's, with many of them based on MERP characters. They do not bear any resmblence to the movie characters though. Also Citadel/GW had the licence in the 1980's to produce miniatures based on the books, as did Harlequin miniatures in the 1990's.

So there is a possibility to have a licence for LOTR that is not based on the movies which should make it cheaper. After all Heritage Miniatures had the licence to produce miniatures based on the 1978 movie but licences after that until the GW one were based on the books.

I would be very surprised to see any more movies based on Tolkien's other books as the rights to them are solely in the hands of Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien Estate unlike the Hobbit and LOTR.

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Sorry, that's what I meant

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Instagram @abbmodels

The Middle-earth license saga is a fascinating one. It's probably one of the original "IP Farms." At one point Saul Zaentz website was just a list of all the words they owned the commercial rights to. Never mind the qualities that makes the book one of the most beloved in the English language, it was look at these words. The value of these words was vastly inflated because at any point between 1970 and 2000, someone was going to make a blockbuster movie. Any day now. When Jackon's films were made, the property succeeded hugely, thus inflating that value even further. The possibility of a future Hobbit film arose, the value remained inflated. The problem being is that the IP isn't quite worth what Hollywood values it as. The LOTR merchandising phenomenon lasted until the early months of 2005 - not the Star Wars esque decade long thing they all assumed. Hobbit merchandising is nowhere near as ubiquitous as LOTR.

Point being: the license GW paid for won't be worth it to them three years from now. Also they'd be fools to renew right off.

However, it does seem possible that, say, five years from now, someone might be able to put together a package of LOTR gaming products, maybe even licensing specific film imagery. There will no longer be a "forthcoming major motion picture" or an ongoing cultural craze jacking up the price. LOTR will become a still important, still beloved, but far less expensive IP license. It would be a lot harder to constantly reboot the thing as other properties have. It could be done, but its highly unlikely. The appeal of the mainstream film was as much to do with the cast, music and directing choices as the IP itself.

It's possible that by around 2018 or 2019, we might see some new set of Middle-earth gaming products, but they won't be from GW.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

...what happens next???

The core players and collectors will sweep up on ebay, as folks grow out or become disinterested. That is where I will be (sweeping). There is just one such fellow making an announcement on the forum this weekend. I think that is fine. A lot of gamers are infatuated with the new and shiny. Then something else comes along and that is what they want. That could be a family, video games, sports, or whatever. In the end, as long as you have the rules, suitable game pieces, and people to run battles against... the system will live on. The thought of having such a rarefied system appeals to me. This game is timeless. It's to GW's own detriment to let it go. We will (IMHO) always have a home for this game in our collective hearts and imagination.

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