LOL, I view the following as highly ironic:
"'We deeply value the contributions of the Tolkien novels to the success of our films and are pleased to have put this litigation behind us,' said Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc."
Yeah, I guess Tolkien's novels had some inspiratory value...
Yes, this galls me, too ---
Without the highly fertile imagination of Mr J.R.R. Tolkien himself
( and his willingness to share his imaginings with the rest of the world ) the Great Movie Makers would have had nothing to work with, in the first place...
As it was, they were instead handed a "cant-miss" project -
the base material for their project was so rich, it was only a matter of how far they could go in not messing it up, without the end result
still becoming a phenomenal success...
( or, perhaps even being able to mess it up as much as they wanted, and yet
still have the end result be a multi-billion-dollar-maker )
And, with the movies already having a "built-in" audience eagerly awaiting the outcome of their production from the get-go---
On top of this, I would even go so far as to say that Tolkien's works had already influenced the movie industry's output, even
before "The Lord Of The Rings" was produced --
First of all, the great success of Tolkien's books in the 1960's and beyond had already spurred on a new interest in
Fantasy ( specifically Heroic Fantasy ) after having practically single-handedly having created this new genre ( as a form of highly popular fiction, at any rate ) in the first place...
This new genre of literature, and the new resurgence in subjects associated with it ( Medeival History, Ancient England, Scotland,
Wales & Ireland, the Druids, the Vikings, Mythology, "Magic",
etc ) even tended to create a new "subculture" of people receptive to ( and drawn to ) these kind of things...
Anyway, all this influenced the movie-making scene, for sure -
and at the very least, had already resulted in directing the direction of some movie-making - just for one example, there is that movie, "
Willow", but I am sure there are other examples of "Pre-LOTR" movies in this vein....
