Middle Earth in the Content Economy

When J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher said this in 2012, it was a genuinely shocking thing to say. Among people who were interested in Tolkien’s work, it was broadly ignored as something nobody knew quite how to deal with. It was dissonant. After all, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films debuted ten years prior to great acclaim and have since aged into a cinematic touchstone for Hollywood’s later era. They were critical and popular successes.