The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Movie Discussion: The Hobbit: Battle of the Last Alliance

1) CRRT is Tolkien's literary executor. As such, he was granted by JRRT total control over JRRT's unpublished manuscripts. He could burn them, edit them, rewrite them, publish them as is, or whatever he deemed best. JRRT had complete confidence in Christopher's judgement on these matters. Thank goodness he did NOT decide to burn the lot! What he will ultimately do with the remaining unpublished material is unknown, but he has probably made arrangements for them, possibly to donate them to a university collection, a la Marquette.

(2) CRRT is the executor/trustee of the Tolkien Estate and Trust. This is a clearly defined legal role: he is entrusted with carrying out JRRT's instructions in founding the Tolkien Estate (which is, confusingly, not the same thing as Tolkien's personal estate. You and I and most people when they depart this earth leave behind a personal estate of varying value, which is dispensed in accordance with a will if there is one. The Tolkien Estate and Trust however is a different kind of organization, a family estate trust, which is completely separate. However, the person who set it up (the settlor) stipulates what the estate trust will do and its operational parameters. The executor/trustee must follow these directives. He or she cannot override them. These organizations are audited and monitored for compliance..

CRRT's two roles are very different. In the first, he has considerable, virtually total, discretionary power. In the second, he has very little.

Now, PPP made the point that Tolkien sold the film rights to LOTR and The Hobbit to United Artists "because he needed the money." This is true, but misleading. WHY did he "need the money?" He was doing very well, thank you, since after his retirement from Oxford he was getting substantial income from royalties, and for the first time could provide his wife with pleasures that meant a lot to her (he moved to Bournemouth, where she enjoyed living in a resort setting and mixed with a less intellectual set. Edith never really felt comfortable in Oxford).

So why did he need a large sum of money? Not for himself, but to set up the Tolkien Estate and Trust. You need money to do this. He established trusts for each of his children and grandchildren (and made provisions, we can be sure, for ones not yet born), provided for a charitable arm of the Trust, and in a document usually called a trust deed he specified the purpose, activities and restrictions on the operation of the TE, to take effect on his demise. It's purpose, as the TE endlessly repeats, is to "promote and protect JRRT's literary legacy." We can be sure that came direct from JRRT himself, and it is likely -- because it is one of the purposes of establishing an estate trust for intellectual property -- that it also restricted sale of copyrights or other rights to any of his literary works.

This is a major reason why authors set up an estate trust before their death: to control their intellectual property. It's kind of ironic that in order to set up a mechanism to prevent sale of film or radio rights to his works, Tolkien had to sell the rights to some of his existing works -- but it's not really a contradiction. JRRT did view both TH and LOTR as "commercial" ventures (not in a negative sense), and said to friends that popular success had been surprisingly gratifying, as it had enabled him to give his wife a better life and for both of them to enjoy small pleasures that they would earlier have been unable to afford. But his other works, including and especially The Silmarillion, were another story. He authorized Christopher to burn it, but not to sell movie rights to it!

The trust deed that set up the TE is not a public document, so his exact instructions cannot be verified. However, it is a virtual certainty that he included prohibition on further sale of film rights, copyrights or authorization of commercial products. The TE board of directors cannot overturn its founder, and even when CRRT passes on to Valinor the next director/executor/trustee will have to follow JRRT's instructions as well. He or she does not have a choice.

Those who are hoping for some change of policy after CRRT's death are hoping in vain. Even if a band of film buffs succeed to the board of the TE, they will not be authorized to overrule their founder.

Beyond that, since under UK law Christopher is a joint author of the Sil, he can make it a condition in his own estate that the rights not be sold.

So expecting a change of policy is a vain enterprise. Legally, it can't happen. We will just have to wait for the material to go into the public domain, which it will -- someday.

Meanwhile, if anyone were keen to do it, further Middle-Earth films could be made from the stories in the appendices to LOTR. I doubt there's a market,

urther to the above, it's very significant (in law) that JRRT mentioned in his will that he wanted the rights to stay in the family, but these rights were not included in his personal estate at all. Appointing CRRT the literary executor did not transfer ownership to him, though it was indeed a vote of confidence.

So, what was up with that? Why mention "rights" at all?

In fact it is standard procedure in estate planning that, when a large part of the person's assets have been disposed of outside the will, that an allusion to it be made in the will, but without details. The reason for this is to prevent challenges to the will in the future. If a person made arrangements for disposition of assets and then, say a year or two later, made a will in which these were not mentioned, the will could be subsequently challenged in court as invalid because the person "forgot" tp mention his other assets and beneficiaries and thus was "not of sound mind." Don't laugh, these things happen fairly often when people receive no (or poor) legal advice. JRRT's will was made and signed only weeks before his death.

JRRT sold the rights to LOTR and Hobbit precisely in order to set up the estate trust that is now called the "Tolkien Estate and Trust." That's where the money from the sale went: to set up the trust funds and pay an estate trust lawyer to draw up the necessary trust deeds, etc. There were tax reasons above all for doing this; putting the income from the books (as well as the income from the sale of the rights) into trust funds reduced taxes on his estate and also income tax on his family members in the future. The exact way the estate trust will be run and what it can and cannot do is specified in the trust deed drawn up by JRRT with his lawyers, but unlike his will it is not a public document.

The fact that he alluded to his desire for the "rights" to stay in the family in his will (with no further information, except an earlier mention of setting up the trust) tells us pretty clearly that the estate trust covers these matters. The TE in all its public statements sounds like a broken record, saying its mandate is to preserve and promote JRRT's literary legacy -- a phrase that doubtless comes straight from the trust deed. Knowing how strongly Tolkien felt about "adaptations" we can be quite confident these are specifically prohibited for the duration of the copyright period. And the board cannot overrule what JRRT specified was to be done. Thus, a bevy of future board members who are film buffs will not be able to change the foundation documents.Their hands will be tied.

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