Apparently the original agreement the Saul Zaent Co bought included movies and TV shows UNDER 8 episodes, shows OVER 8 episodes are retained by The Tolkien Estate which is why Amazon paid out the Tolkien Estate $250m for the rights, and they had to commit to at least two seasons. Even still, the rights they bought were for stuff in the LOTR appendices not the main books but then I don't really understand how they can use the name like Galadriel or Elrond.
The patchwork is very confusing still, but the price went down a lot I guess since it was valued at $2b back in February but Embracer bought all of it for $750m from Zaentz today. Everyone expected Amazon to buy the full rights for $2b so its a bit of a surprise that Embracer picked it up for $750m. Does Amazon not want to do more with the IP?
Tolkien Group still owns various aspects, you can see some of it here. Its all weird since books go into the public domain 70 years after an author dies, so thats coming up in a few years for the Hobbit but I'm not sure what that means for worlds built off books.
Film rights are back on the menu, boys! If you want to make new Lord of the Rings movies, it'll only you cost $2 billion.
winteriscoming.net
tl;dr some jew bought some rights for lord of the rings in 1976 and his jew kids got a $750m payout for it today but its an entirely different set of rights this threads TV show is using. The big question is, why didn't Amazon buy the rest of the rights?