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Tolkien Estate Sues New LineBy Stuart Wood: 2008-02-11 17:28:23
If there is one project most people on the planet are gunning to see made it is the Peter Jackson produced adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. However, the brakes might've been put on the project for the umpteenth time and the reason why is all too familiar and all too depressing.
Yahoo News is reporting that The Tolkien Trust, caretakers of the author's estate are suing New Line Cinema for failing to pay the estate an agreed percentage of the grosses of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now if you cast your mind back, the whole reason it took so long to get Peter Jackson back on board was because, yes you guessed it, he had to sue New Line after they tried to block him out of his agreed cut of the profits. New Line's reasoning? Pete made enough money anyway, he doesn't need more. Could Bob Shaye be so stupid and greedy that he actually tried to con the director AND some of the cast and crew AND now the author's estate out of their dues? How dirty and greedy can one studio be? Granted New Line has been treading water as a studio for a good few years now but that's pretty low. Steven Maier, a lawyer for the Tolkien estate in the UK, said in a statement. "New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures." Maier also says the studio has blocked the Tolkien estate from auditing the receipts of the last two films. A sure sign of a company with nothing to hide. The most worrying aspect of this court case is what the estate is asking for. Not only are they asking for $150 million worth of compensatory damages and punitive damages, they are also petitioning for a court order giving them the right to terminate any rights New Line have to make films based on any other works by Tolkien - including The Hobbit. That's right: because of another allegation of fleecing people, New Line may have potentially deprived the people of seeing the further adventures of Bilbo. What do you think? Would the Tolkien estate be right to cut all ties to New Line after they alledgedly tried to frisk them out of hundreds of millions worth of residuals and thus putting the future of The Hobbit in jeopardy, or should they take their damages and bury the hatchet as Peter Jackson eventually did?
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February 12, 2008 at 13:57