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Many people here, including Mr. Hicklin, speak as if they have a Supreme Court decision in front of them clearly spelling out in great detail what can be done and what cannot be done with these film rights. This is not the case in reality. There is much grey area .
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Surely it's this simple: the film rights include material in the LotR appendices but exclude material in other publications. Explicit use of material that is in the Silmarillion and not in the appendices would be illegal. You don't need a Supreme Court decision to tell you that any more than you need one to tell you that, yes, pointing a gun at someone and shooting it is illegal (even if the gun is licensed).
There
is a potential grey area relating to the appendices: it's conceivable that if a movie were made there might be material in it about which it's not clear whether the '77 Silm. or HoMe was or was not a source. But the ambiguity in such a case could only lie in whether the film used ideas from works other than TH and LotR, not whether the use of such intellectual property is legal.