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Tolkien Trust Sues New Line, May Kill "Hobbit"
oboreruhito writes "The AP is reporting that the Tolkien Trust and HarperCollins are suing New Line Cinema for $150 million in compensatory damages, unspecified punitive damages, and a court order revoking New Line's rights to produce any more films on Tolkien properties. The Tolkien Trust says that New Line paid them only $62,500 to make 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy of films — instead of the agreed-upon 7.5 percent of gross receipts of all film-related revenue. The suit may set back, if not kill, a film adaptation of Lord of the Rings prequel 'The Hobbit,' which Peter Jackson had recently signed up to make after his own legal row with the studio over payment for the sequels."
The term you're looking for is Hollywood accounting.
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Even so, many films with big-name actors that are called "independent" are nonetheless closely tied to studios. Remember the buzz over Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , a fresh new film made by a new group of filmmakers outside the mainstream? Well, it came from Focus Features, which despite calling itself an "art house" studio is in fact owned by Universal.
One wonders if the accounting on European films is more honest. European film industries are heavily subsidized by the state, and when you have to report back to the state on what you've done with their funding, perhaps there is less temptation to cook the books.
They haven't won their suit yet. The studios haven't yet gotten what they deserve. But I'm with you -- I hope they lose BIG. The judge should award triple damages.
I'm with you 100% there. Copyright is supposed to encourage authors/composers/etc. to create new works to enrich society. Tolkien isn't even enriching the ground he's buried in anymore, so there's *zero* need for a copyright to continue to exist on his works. Copyright is only providing an income stream for his heirs (and New Line) at the expense of society now.
I think that New Line is scummy for their shady accounting practices, but they really should not have had to negotiate for the film rights to begin with.
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If your name doesn't come before the title, then you're never, ever getting a sniff of the gross. Even headline producers, writers and directors often can't demand that, and end up with less than the guy working the clapboard for union salary.
One of the most egregious cases is creator/producer/writer J. Michael Straczynski getting boned over Babylon 5 . He was in for a share of the net, and Warner Brothers demonstrated by their actions that the show was making a net profit every season (or else it would have been shitcanned). However, the final figure, after all production expenses had long since ceased, and all the money from merchandise and DVD sales (half a billion gross!) was in worked out to a claimed $80 million loss. Riddle me that.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Very well put. One thing that struck me after studying German for a while is that, much like "sit" and "set" or "lie" and "lay" are intransitive/transitive verb pairs differentiated by the central vowel ("sitzen" and "setzen" / "liegen" and "legen" in the German), so too are "live" and "love" ("leben" and "lieben") -- "love" is the transitive form of "live". So in that sense, loving someone is helping them live well, helping them grow and be healthy. Romance doesn't *have* to enter into this picture, which is why you can just as well love your siblings even despite a very rocky growing up. Which is also why I know that I'm loving my wife the most not when I'm feeling all lovey-dovey, but when she's annoying the crap out of me or I'm pissed as hell at her, but *still* try my damnedest to make things work.
Love is work. Marriage is work. And the truer measure of how much you love your partner/spouse doesn't happen during the easy times -- it's how you behave and how you work at it during the rough times, even if you happen to hate each other's guts right at that moment. *That's* when you fulfill whatever promises or vows you've made.
Cheers,
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"A four-foot prune."