I'm doubtful if the negotiations with New Line played as big a role as suggested, if only because the growing ineptitude GW have displayed by treating their customers and business partners with an attitude bordering on contempt predated the release of the Hobbit by many years and extends across all their ranges.
The relative lack of merchandise for DoS and BoFA IMO has less to do with attitude from New Line, and IMO more to do with the fact that AUJ merch didn't sell, being as mikeland put it, poor films.
Draugluin wrote:
Well, the average worldwide gross for the trilogy was almost a billion dollars a piece. So lots of people enjoyed them.
Watching a film is not necessarily the same thing as enjoying it.
While critical opinion doesn't always reflect the opinion of the masses, IMO it's telling that the metacritic scores for the LotR Trilogy was 88-94 while that of the Hobbit Trilogy was 58-66.
mikeland wrote:
I don't have any problem with the changes and stuff brought in from the expanded writing of Tolkien... I just think they were poor films, badly scripted at times, really poorly paced and plotted and the characters failed to engage in the way they should have, basic movie making flaws really. And despite the brevity of the source material this didn't need to be the case. Some great movies have come from short stories and novellas.
But this is all way of topic, my point was that perhaps the movies failed to engage on the same level that the LotR did and this had a knock on effect with the marketing. (For example at world book day the kids were still all dressing up as The Avengers not Bilbo and Legolas... )
Agree with this.