Demetrious Polychron, a Lord of the Rings fan fiction writer, has decided to sue the Tolkien Estate and The Rings of Power TV series creator Amazon for what he claims to be copyright infringement of his novel, The Fellowship of the King: The War of the Rings, Radar Online has learned. Court documents obtained by the publication can confirm that Polychron has filed a $250 million lawsuit against several Amazon Studio execs, J. R. R. Tolkien’s estate, and even the former president and CEO of Amazon himself, Jeff Bezos, who is currently listed as being the third-wealthiest person in the world behind Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk. “These wholly original distinct and separate characters and storylines compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series as released and published by Defendants. In many cases, Defendants copied exact language,” reads one portion of the suit, while another portion claims that “Defendants copied images that match the book cover and descriptions as created in the book as authored by Polychron.” Polychron’s book has a two-star rating on Amazon at the time of this posting following 12 reviews.
From a Radar Online report:
In the lawsuit, Polychron said he created, wrote and published an original book entitled The Fellowship of the King and conceived an entire seven-book series, The War of the Rings.
The writer said he obtained a copyright for the book in 2017. His work was heavily influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien’s books.
In November 2017, the writer claimed he sent a letter to Tolkien’s grandson explaining his love of the Lord of the Ring books, and told him about his books. Polychron claimed he asked if Tolkien’s relative would review his book.
However, he said he received no response.
Two years later, he hired a lawyer to reach out to Tolkien’s estate. However, he said they responded by rebuffing any attempt at collaboration.
Polychron claimed he left a copy of his manuscript at Tolkien’s grandson’s home in 2019. He said he was never contacted.
The writer said the estate then signed a $250 million deal with Amazon to create the series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. He said the show “copied largely from” his book.
Polychron said while his book was inspired by Lord of the Rings, his work had separate and distinct characters and storylines from the LOTR series.
Discussion (8 replies)
Join Discussion →Likely outcome is that he will lose and will make most fanfiction illegal.
Considering how horrible the series was and how much like terrible fanfic it was I wouldn't be surprised to find out something like this is true.
And poof, the link for the book on Amazon is gone now. :ROFLMAO:
Getting a copyright for fanfiction in itself seems a little bizarre and even then where exactly is the line regarding what was borrowed from the original books and what the estate can draw from his book since this book is using said content as a basis? If they (Amazon/estate) did use a significant amount of content verbatim from that book then sure perhaps some sort of compensation should've occurred, or at least some communication but I don't really know. This is a new twist that I don't remember seeing before but there's a chance this guy might have some ground to stand on with this case.
We can only hope. 99.9% of all fan-fiction is hot garbage.
It may be mostly garbage, but I don't think that means I want it to be illegal either.
I can't say that I ever got into knowingly reading any fanfiction stuff but I used to be a huge fan of fan films back in the early 2000s. I still have a collection on DVD somewhere that was put together from the best-of-the-best.
These were two of my favorites from back then:
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I remember Batman: Dead End!!!
Fair point.