How German indie publisher Daedalic landed The Lord of the Rings license

pcgamesinsider.biz:

Founded back in 2007, Daedalic Entertainment has predominantly focused on small scale point-and-click adventure games in addition to indie titles in more recent years.

But the company's future is certainly looking bright as it has secured the rights to The Lord of the Rings license for video games in the wake of Amazon landing the TV rights and being set to produce the most expensive show ever.

Daedalic's first title centres on the conflicted Gollum and will be launching in 2021. We caught up with CEO Carsten Fichtelmann to find out a bit more about this project.

So this is a huge license - how did you come to work on The Lord of the Rings IP?

Due to the fact that storytelling is difficult, you need to work with something that is timeless. When you are in a situation where no-one has a secure foundation, you need to have something that's also a TV series and on subscription services. This is also the biggest thing we have right now. We licensed The Lord of the Rings. We spoke to Middle-earth Enterprises four or five years ago. These are the same people that Peter Jackson called 20 years ago to make the film.

What can you tell us about this project? 

The game is going to be an action adventure - the first part of a series - and will launch in 2021 for all relevant platforms. The license has already been out there for 60 years - it's still popular and what we are doing with the license is focusing on one character where their conflict is already there and explained. That's quite a good starting point for a story-telling game. That character will be Gollum.

We also have mobile rights. This is meant to be a premium game. Maybe what Google announced today is good for us, but it could mean that the iPad in 2021 is