They have the right to the appendices in LOTR. Everything I've heard says the bridge movie being canceled was more due to the Hobbit being better as two movies than any legal issues.
THE HOBBIT (2012/2013): News, Rumors, Pics Till Release
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Exactly. And most everything about Aragorn's youth was covered in the Appendices. So if WB wanted to do a movie about him, they'd be well within their rights to do so.
I'm not sure it's that simple. Yes, they have the rights to the appendices, and the info therein, for use in adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I'm not sure that that means, however, that they can make entire movies out of mere elements of the same.
If they tried to make, say, a young Aragorn movie inspired by said text, the Tolkien estate might say they were overstepping their bounds of making an adaptation of The Return of the King. (It's not as though the WB would voluntarily call a young Aragorn movie The Lord of the Rings Origins: Aragorn.) Hasn't it been speculated that X-Men Origins: Wolverine had the first part of that title as a way of emphasizing to Marvel that they were making a full-bore X-Men movie, albeit an odd one, and were thus renewing their lease on the property during the five year gap between the one that shall not be named and First Class? And if that were the reason they were stuffing all this extra stuff into The Hobbit movies and not a separate "bridge" movie, they certainly wouldn't publicly admit it; of course they'd call it the "right artistic decision", blah, blah...
The Hobbit clearly shows they have no qualms about overstepping their bounds. Much of the Hobbit movies are borrowed from The Quest of Erebor. They just skirt the issue by saying it's based on the Appendices.
The bridge movie clearly became a part of the Hobbit Trilogy. The White Council, Galadriel, Saruman, Radagast, the Nazgul, the Necromancer, Dol Guldor, Legolas... this is all additional material feeding straight into LOTR. I'm sure the third movie will take this "bridging" even further.
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