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Originally Posted by lumpynose
That's what I'm thinking as well. I don't know anything about book publishing and royalties but I'd also bet that J. K. Rowling made a lot more money from the rights to make movies from her books than she did from the sales/royalties of the books.
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It's actually kind of complicated. For example, the movie rights to LOTR and The Hobbit was actually sold in 1969 for less than a quarter of a million and for a long time resided with Tolkien Enterprises, a company that has no relation to the Tolkien estate or any of the Tolkien family. That's one of the big reasons that none of the movies contains anything from any of the backstory books such as the Silmarillion. All this was the subject of a long legal battle. I believe that the Tolkien estate won back the rights and now holds them, so they got the $250 M that Amazon paid for the rights to make the TV series. Rumor has it that they also got the rights to some of the back story that was not included in LOTR or the Hobbit.
Apparently Rowling either was more cagey about movie rights than Tolkien was, or she had a better lawyer.