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."

Comments

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how quickly Slashdot is pulling its news from Digg these days (which is where I read this story first, obviously). Used to take a week or so before Slashdot would finally catch up, maybe they've written some sort of a Perl script to parse Digg stories and automatically front-page them. Wouldn't be much of a surprise, the site's doing everything in its power to -be- Digg down to the very look and feel, and failing miserably.

Re:Standard corporate intimidation

[Turn-X Alphonse]

And you forgot the most important step, it should of been.

1. Sign a contract promising a percentage of the gross
2. Pay a small advance to get the job done
3. Once the job is done, don't pay one more cent, and laugh all the way to the bank
4. Most contractors don't know a decent lawyer/can't afford them or won't both to sue
5. ???
6. Profit

It's just not a Slashdot list without the vital ??? step before profit. It's our bitter little way to show that plans always fail so we must use some sort of devil worship to achieve out goals.