People love to say this kind of thing. But it didn’t stop Stern from doing AC/DC or Star Trek. We all know they’d sell plenty of LOTRs if they did a run. People love this game and used ones are close enough to NIB pricing that it won’t be a huge factor.

Maybe, maybe not. JJP would have had limited leverage in that negotiation, just like any other pinball mfr. (we’re not talking big dollars for the rights holders here). Licensing is a potential bar, but no one on Pinside knows what the studio/likeness rights situation is.

Understood, but you’re probably not the Vault target audience! There are people that get psyched about potential changes/improvements (print quality and sound quality in this case), and people that just love NIB. If you’re in that camp and can live with not owning an LOTR for a few more years to see what Stern does, there’s no harm in hoping and waiting.

The Tolkien estate has nothing to do with it, and lucky for us, as they would never, ever license a pinball machine (his son absolutely hates the movies and all of the merchandising). But Tolkien sold all film and licensing rights off back in the 60s, and all of the LOTR/Hobbit licensed stuff is working off of that license.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_Enterprises

New Line in turn got a license from them to make LOTR, presumably including the right to make movie-related merch. So Stern would be negotiating with New Line and/or Middle-earth Enterprises. If they're willing to redo the deal at a reasonable rate, then all is well. Only wrinkle is whether the actors signed away likeness rights to Lionsgate forever, or if Stern would have to go negotiate them individually (which would presumably be a huge pain and probably a deal killer).

Who cares? Every game Stern has ever re-made was relatively plentiful compared to the truly-rare games out there like BBB (or 24, for that matter). Supply is entirely meaningless without acknowledging the demand. And demand for LOTR is strong. There are 8,000 of them and it still fetches $5-$6k. Which looks to me like stronger demand than for almost anything other than maybe Addams Family.

@srmonte wants a NIB LOTR with improved art and sound, and is apparently willing to pay for it. If there are enough buyers like him then Stern can make money on a remake. I think it's a pretty safe bet that they'd sell enough of this highly regarded game to make it worth their while.

They figured something out on Iron Man VE, right?

Sure there are more of them and they may be a bit more complex, but it's extremely hard to imagine figurines being the thing that keeps an LOTRVE from happening. If it was crazy expensive to do a small run of custom-cast and painted toys, IM wouldn't have had them. Worst case they make another run without figurines, and Pinside modders will instantly step up to prove they can be recreated piecemeal.

Figurines won't kill the deal.

Looks like $5495 MSRP from that Stern price tracking thread. Not sure what street price was, but somewhat less anyway.

The pinball market has changed a lot since 2014, so regardless of whether licensing and production costs would be that much different, it'd be a pipedream to expect an LOTR at that price when Pros are going for ~$6k.

I’d love an LOTRVE at $5.5k. But you can’t even get a Pro for that anymore, so it’s not remotely realistic.

Was it on a podcast? That guy’s on fire today!

It's definitely been "discussed extensively" but with nothing at all from Stern we're all just speculating. I still think an LOTR Vault would be good business for Stern and I hope they make one, but none of us know if, when, or how it might happen.

I’ll bite - who?

This isn’t vault related, but it was cool playing LOTR right next to John Rhys-Davies (at his signature table) this weekend at TPF. I’m sure he got sick of hearing his voice doing the call outs, but it was fun for me!

The fact that they made 5,000, or 8,000, is irrelevant to whether a Vault makes sense. Unless you think Stern runs Vault games so that everyone can get a chance to play its rarer games, instead of to maximize profit and fill the line during down-periods. In the case of LOTR, despite a very large run there's enough demand that even routed examples go for more than $5k. Tron may go for more (though I'm not even sure if that's true any more, LOTR keeps creeping up in price) but with only a fraction of the number of games made, so there's plainly more demand for LOTR. If Stern is looking to make more Vaults at this point -- and who knows in the pandemic era, they may well end up with a backlog of new game designs they could run and have no time or interest in doing Vaults -- LOTR is still right at the top of the list of logical games to run again.

The question as always is whether they could make the licensing work, and it's still the case that no one on Pinside knows anything about that. Though if someone pushes forward and tries to license the "The Art of Pinball" playfield shown in this thread so it can be reproduced and sold, they may learn something about the state of the LOTR license through that process. Of course no one with any sense would expect the results of that conversation to show up on Pinside, but if they can get approvals to move this project forward that will suggest that licensing for a LOTR Vault is not a lost cause.

Either way, @scott9, looking forward to seeing you finalize that new design, which will be just as cool whether it remains a one-off or makes it into production.

You’ve definitely got one of the good ones (as I recall the print resolution on yours is quite good too). It’s amazing how much variability in play field print quality there was on this game.

I looked into this a whole back, it’s not the Tolkien estate as JRR sold off all movie rights while he was still alive:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-lotr-vault#post-4735393

I don't know what happened with the Arwen plastic, but it looks like at some point Stern started running replacements with her image removed? If that's what you're talking about, I'm not sure it tells us much one way or the other about the status of the LOTR actors' likeness rights. Stern would need a license from LionsGate to reproduce images from the film regardless, and since that license expired some years ago, Stern can no longer make the Arwen plastic.

Too much hassle for too little reward. For every person that likes a new feature there’re two who are mad that it’s not “original.”

Reskinning/revoicing may be necessary if the film assets are effectively unobtainable, but I don’t see an upside for Stern in “reimagining” the game beyond that.