The history of The Lord of the Rings isn’t one of dwarves, orcs, elves, balrogs, wizards or hobbits. It’s one of legal disputes, troubled adaptations and multimillion-dollar acquisitions. Its leading players are lawyers, vociferous fans, video-game designers, novelists, tabletop role players and film producers.
Since the publication of The Return of the King — the final volume in the trilogy — in 1955, the series has, in one form or another, been at various stages of development for radio, stage, television, film or gaming. Although the BBC’s first radio version the same year was, by the standards of future efforts, a relatively placid affair, adapting The Lord of the Rings for other media has long been a fraught undertaking.
So many attempts have been made to bring a story director Stanley Kubrick regarded as “unfilmable” to the screen that the question of who exactly owns the rights to do so has been fiercely contested in court. Just as in the fictional universe of The Lord of the Rings, where every other character who comes into contact with the “One Ring” pays a terrible price, those who aspire to adapt the novels for cinema risk hefty legal bills. The 2001-03 film series alone has been the subject of lawsuits from the producer Saul Zaentz, the Weinstein brothers, the films’ director Peter Jackson and the estate of Tolkien himself.