What, why would he do that? Seems like a marketing ploy gone wrong.
FWIW though I rather enjoyed The Last Ringbearer.
FWIW though I rather enjoyed The Last Ringbearer.
They likely sent scripts/drafts in the past looking to become officially licensed and failed. So, they launched anyways, hoping to become a commercial success and resume talks. Then when they saw perceived similarity between the later released Amazon prequel they saw a chance to force deal. Ideally, Amazon/Tolkien estate settle with the book series becoming officially licensed works.
Realistically, that was never going to happen either.
It is exceedingly uncommon for any media franchise to accept story submissions "on spec", even in franchises which are less author-focused like films or TV series. For a literary series like LotR? Forget it. You might as well ask the Pope if you can write a new book of the Bible.
(This isn't to say that licensed works aren't a thing -- far from it! But they're almost always commissioned by the owner of the franchise, not on spec. There's rarely any lack of authors willing to write for a high-profile franchise.)
It seems they were hoping they could win the suit and force licensing as part of the settlement, which would return the derivative work under Tolkien estate and allow Amazon to use it. In the other case, they were going to get shot down, but then they hoped that the lengthy process of examining the work would convince the estate it was a worthy sequel, and the Tolkien estate would take a cut of the book sales in return for officially licensing it.
This was always going to end up in the courts, they probably thought suing first for infringement would be favorable to them rather than wait to get sued later.
Further, it says something about the writer that they didn't foresee how this would play out.
But then, you're right about the second point. But even here, why would you assume that someone who's a talented fantasy fiction author would also be a talented businessperson? So conversely, if he's a bad businessperson, this doesn't make him necessarily a bad author. I don't have any other examples for authors, but I can name a bunch of rock stars off the top of my head who were fantastic and gifted musicians but totally clueless about business (and many other things too).