You didn’t think that the road to making The Hobbit would be easy, did you? Things just don’t work that way. The Tolkien estate is suing New Line, claiming that the studio didn’t pay them their cut of the gross profits for the huge megablockbuster Lord of the Rings films. Does this sound familiar? It should – it seems like New Line just tried to not pay out to anybody with this one. Hollywood accounting at its finest!
The estate and Harper Collins publishers filed suit in Los Angeles today, seeking the 7.5 percent of gross profits they were promised; the suit asks for 150 million in compensatory damages, an unspecified amount in punitive damages and – this is the kicker – the ability to sever any rights that New Line has to make movies based on Tolkien’s work. That could mean the end of The Hobbit movie (if the Tolkien estate is stupid, that is. What it really means is that they’ll use the threat of termination to negotiate themselves a heftier chunk of the profits next time).
“The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court,” Steven Maier, an attorney for the Tolkien estate based in Britain, 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.”
It’s astonishing that big corporations act like this. Not even a penny? That’s fucking ridiculous, and I can’t imagine that they’ll even be able to hide behind the mathematical gymnastics that Paramount tried to use to prove that Coming to America was a money loser when Art Buchwald sued them. This is the sort of scumbaggery that wears down any decent person trying to make it in Hollywood. It also effects people like me.
Make no mistake, this shit will get sorted out – New Line cannot afford to NOT make The Hobbit, and unless the Tolkien estate can wrangle Peter Jackson et al away to a new studio*, they’d be throwing away hundreds of millions more by shutting down the two Hobbit movies.
*and considering Jackson’s history with New Line, maybe they can!
13 comments
Can anyone clear the air on this issue? Wouldn't it be better to negotiate a deal based on a percentage of the box office rather than the actual profits? Or is that just not done by the studios? Maybe that's what both Jackson and the Tolkien estate should do for the Hobbit movies.
Its not even like New Line gets credit for greenlighting LOTR. Didn't the guy who approved the huge budget immediately get fired/replaced?
if i remember correctly, christopher tolkien (who i believe in all practical purposes IS the tolkien estate) had a rather dim view of the lotr movies but his father had sold the rights years ago. could this be a way for him to shutdown something he doesn't believe in?
It might not be a good idea to go ahead and assume that what the plaintiff's lawyer says is absolutely true. He has a position he needs to advance in furtherance of his own interests as a presumably well-compensated "zealous advocate". The money could be in escrow, where it may not technically be in the possession of the estate, but New Line also can't appropriate it. There may be numerous viable arguments for both sides – don't take what a plaintiff's lawyer says at face value and pass it along as news.
The Tolkien estate did nothing to support Jackson's movies despite the fact that the movies only generated more interest and revenue for the already insanely lucrative books. Now they want their cut? I'm with New Line on this one. Any author should be honored to have their material be given the treatment that Rings got.
Pat, you're not seriously trying to place blame on JRR Tolkien here, are you? I believe he died in 1973.
So Pat, you're saying that the only credit an author deserves is the honor of seeing in on the big screen?
I think it *affects* people like you.
Pat, that is why you will never be involved in movies. You are incredibly stupid.
pat it doesn't matter what you think is good enough even though what you think is ridiculous…a deal is a deal. I remember when people were saying things like 'jacksons just being greedy he's just a rich greedy bastard" and other inane things like that when he took them to court. its not about greed…its not about suddenly deciding you want more money for no reason….its about making a deal and keeping to it….
You people can't read. Mawazi, I said his estate, not him. I'm aware he's dead. Dude, I referred to Rings' "treatment", i.e. being faithfully adapted into 3 Oscar winning movies, that's a far cry than just "seeing it on the screen". Dude (again) and alfie: It's been 8 years since Fellowship came out and NOW they file a lawsuit, when Hobbit is all but guaranteed? Come on now.
You're all also forgetting how careless Tolkien and his estate were with the rights in the first place. He sold the film rights while he was alive because he never thought they'd get made. By the 50's Disney owned the film rights, and Tolkien loathed what Disney did with fairy tales. The fact that the movies survived Disney in the 50's, the possible Beatles live action cast in the '60 and the WEINSTEINS in the 90's to emerge as three monuments of modern film is pretty miraculous.
Bob Shaye and New Line clearly aren't a bunch of saints, but a shakedown's a fuckin' shakedown.
Wait a minute. So an estate in charge of managing an author's works should lose their right to any money generated from said works because they didn't make nice with New Line?
How does this high school logic make any sense to you? If you're aware of the details of the various contracts that would detail the estate being legally exempt from receiving any financial compensation in the movie rights detail and/or that said compensation is conditional on them being real friendly and supportive, please share it with the class.
Otherwise you're blathering nonsense solely based on the arguable notion that the films are miraculous "monuments of modern film" so they should be "grateful". The Tolkien estate has done more to disseminate and protect JRR Tolkien's work than any Hollywood studio. Keep some perspective. (And I say that as someone who owns the three extended dvds and film sountracks.)
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.