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Tolkien Enterprises To Film Hobbit With Jackson?
cyclomedia writes "TheOneRing.Net has a new scoop on the ongoing Hobbit Movie saga, sourced from elbenwald.de. Apparently the rights to make the Hobbit film fall back to Saul Zaentz 'next year.' He claims that, under their stewardship, The Hobbit will 'definitely be shot by Peter Jackson.'
For the whippersnappers amongst you: Mr. Zaentz is the head honcho of Tolkien Enterprises, which originally acquired exclusive rights to productions of the LOTR and Hobbit material in 1976, prior to overseeing the Bakshi animated version of LOTR."
Don't you mean "Who are you Tolkien about?" :)
Peter Jackson will write a book "If I Did It". He will also sing a reggae song "I shot the Hobbit" (featuring Gollum as a CGI Bob Marley).
-- Rastignac was here.
... what all these guys have against the Hobbit? I mean, this Saul guy is hiring that thug Peter to have the Hobbit shot... That Hobbit should have banged his wife or something...
Pretty much yeah - my guess is that even though New Line are legally entitled to make The Hobbit prior to the license revoking, given this news that PJ will film it with Tolkien Enterprises (assuming he confirms it, of course) will pretty much scupper that.
After all, it's the Jackson/WETA name that would put bums on seats rather than the New Line name. I mean, which would you go to see? A rush-job put out so NL could monopolize on the license before it expired, or a piece where Jackson *and* Tolkien Enterprises paid the proper respect to the IP? Thanks for the offer of a Big Mac, but I don't want to ruin my appetite.
I may be wrong, but it is my understanding that "Tolkien Enterprises" hold the rights to the films (LOTR, Hobbit etc) and were paid by New Line in order to grant them a license to create them (evidently this would have been for a large sum of money and all of the films at once, rather than licensing each individual one at a time as it would have given either side a chance to renegotiate based on the success/failure of what was release). This deal would have been signed with a clause saying that it "ends" in X amount of years, so that Tolkien Enterprises take back the rights and can either produce it themselves or relicense it to another studio in the case of New Line not producing the film in time, putting it on the backburner or just deciding not to work on it for monetary/staff reasons (such as the dispute with Peter Jackson now).
If New Line do not get production underway pretty soon, they risk the rights being taken away from them and I have a feeling that is the primary reason why they are making noise about moving on without Peter Jackson, because evidently they do not want to stop fighting the lawsuit but that is probably the only way it could happen any time soon. What they risk is the backlash that is beginning now, with stars such as Ian Mckellen expressing "dissapointment" at the Jackson scenario, I have a feeling that New Line will run into some problems getting a number of the actors and crew back on board without the man who practically 'made' the franchise what it is.
Business Voyeur
It never ceases to amaze me when people are so incredibly short-sighted. Given that Peter Jackson created a trilogy that was /hugely/ successful, and that the vast majority of people associate his name with the films rather than New Line (I could not have told you the film company associated with LotR [or any film, for that matter] had you asked), what makes more sense:
1) "Let's try and screw him for his royalties, but in the process piss him off so he'll never work for us again."
or
2) "Let's be really nice to him so he'll keep making these financially successful films for us."
How far up your arse does head need to be for 1) to see like the best option?
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / xenogamous.com / transference.org / quantam sufficit ]
It's pretty standard in the film industry. New Line took huge risks by funding 3 movies at once but they also made a lot more money. It was a complicated deal that created opportunities to fiddle the books. They didn't just stiff Jackson though. Tolkien Enterprises also sued New Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_Enterprises for $20m.
The details of the deal aren't too well known. In fact Jackson wasn't aware until recently that the rights would expire at all. It's hard to speculate but it appears that New Line still have time to make the Hobbit and the deal should cover some overrun so that work can still continue on an unfinished project.
After that the rights revert to Tolkien Enterprises so unless there's a clause in the contract that stops Tolkien Enterprises from reshooting the Hobbit immediately it's entirely possible that Jackson could make another version within a year or two (or within months if they were to write the script and do preproduction before they acquire the rights).
A New Line Hobbit film is likely to be profitable so there's a good chance they might try that and hope that Jackson doesn't want to take the risk to compete with a later attempt.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
70 years after the death of the author in the UK, so you'll have to wait until 2043.