[Ricapar]

I think it's partially because of the negotiations with the Tolkein estate that the movies turned out as great as they were.

If no negotiations were needed, then anyone could have picked up and done a low-budget adaptation and called it a day.

But, because there were some rather expensive and difficult negotiations to settle, the amount of people able to do the movies was limited to those who would be able to spend the money to get the rights. And with that sort of investment, there's a big incentive to also invest heavily in the quality of the production to ensure a good return.

[mnutt]

Are you familiar with the hilariously bad 1978 version of Lord of the Rings? It's animated, but at some points switches to rotoscoped live action to save on costs. And it doesn't even finish the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZpmZyTK2dI

But for all of that, I don't see how it stopped Peter Jackson's movie from being made.

[idlewan]

> If no negotiations were needed, then anyone could have picked up and done a low-budget adaptation and called it a day.

And? Anyone can do a low-budget adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and call it a day.

Copyright is supposed to incentivize authors to create more work (by having a return on 'investment'/time put in). Not to restrict those who can create 'work inspired by others' to the uber-rich.

[mikeash]

You seem to be implying in your last paragraph that people won't care as much about making money if they didn't put in a lot up front. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. These movies made money by the truckload. Surely the people who made it would enjoy truckloads of cash even if they hadn't been required to pay for the rights.