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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."
Studios are scumbags. They do "creative" accounting so that no film ever makes money on paper. If you get suckered into accepting net points you will never EVER see a dime. Gross points are the real money and even then they find ways of hiding that money.
This is why you see lots of big actors and big name directors and talent working on more and more "indie" films. they actually get what they are promised from the indie companies.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm shocked! Shocked!
We all know that Hollywood Accounting is a complete scam.
My subject is a quote from TFA.
Let's break this down.
"The Lord of teh Ring's trilogy"
You know what, I'm not even going to bother. What kind of retard submitted this?
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
...Major entertainment companies have long been of the opinion that the artists who create the products they sell are expendable and interchangable... THis is how a studio executive could sleep at night after giving the Tolkien estate less than $63,000 compensation for a property that has made New Line north of $1 billion in revenue...
Glad to hear it--they're getting what they deserver.
Who did what now?
the site's doing everything in its power to -be- Digg down to the very look and feel, and failing miserably.
Surely failing to imitate Digg is a good thing...
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Provided you happen to be an accountant who works in a movie studio.
Has anyone ever figured out the arithmetic to find out how much profit a given studio is making on the assumption that the takings they quote to people who should be getting X% of the total are accurate? I am pretty sure it would demonstrate a massive loss year-on-year.
Everybody loves bashing RIAA, MPAA and the big bad studios, but come on: The Lord of the Rings was originally published in *1955* (more than 50 years ago). Tolkien died in 1973 (more than 35 years ago). The publishers really had enough time to make money; it should be public domain by now. Yes, I know copyright usually expires 50/70 years after the author's death, but these laws really need updating.
The MPAA and their lovers in bed the RIAA have been gong after people for downloading movies and music and everything in between in hopes that people will buy more CDs or specifically more songs (Wired says record companies make more money off songs than CDs>) even to the extent of saying it is illegal to rip CD you bought and put it on your computer and than again to place those same purchased songs on your iPod or MP3 player.
This is pathetic. Those hippocrits are still making tons of money due to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the millions they have made so far, they should at least be respectful. Without LoTR I bet New Line wouldn't have enough money to spend bribing congressman so they should be happy with the few they can buy off and wait for another movie after paying their debts to penetrate deeper and deeper in our government.
Slowly and slowly we are electing the MPAA and RIAA into office and sooner or later the world will be come a dictatorship, not by a single person or politician, but by the entertainment industry telling us we can't even laugh without paying a tax for something funny.
But what do I know?
One day the world of robotics will have the answer.
It looks like most of those around adaptations of Tolkien's works are one by one falling prey to the same
sad curse that overtook Gollum...
"My Precious, My Precious!... Must have the Precious!"
If I may say so, I truly wonder what Tolkien himself would think of all this pathetic bickering and bitter lawsuits.
Z.
Yeah I know, formatting is for wussies! There I go again:
What's depressing is that this is becoming more and more a standard practice, as the courts do not demand enough punitive damage to seriously discourage such bullying... and New Line Cinema seems to have a long record at that.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
When I lived in Wales I shared a student house with a girl called Freya who is a close descendant of Tolkien. I have to say the family is a very nice family and they certainly should get alot more than they are currently getting for the rights. Then again, why should they make money for someone elses work that they didn't make themselves? It's a tough call, but I'm biased so I think they should get the money (and give some to me lol) :-)
Anyone else remember Dragon magazine and the spoof on getting sued by the Tolkien estate - they weren't allowed to say "ring".
"Someone get the phone, its circular metal banding off the hook!"
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
It is not standard practice. It is a how companies deal with business.
Are you surprised? But this is what you get when company as entity have nor moral nor serious legal obligations to law. Surprise, it is cornerstone of so called American business thinking.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
You misspelled "loser", and I can't even guess what you were aiming for with @#$%.
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Nasty Tolkienses! TRICKSY!!!!!!
The reason for IP is to give the creators an incentive to create, not for the folks who buy the rights to profit off of them for all eternity.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I agree that 50 years is too long (or about right).
But what do you think the same studios would say if you took a film made in 1954 and just started distributing it? They'd sue you into oblivion. Further, it was the film studios themselves who pushed for such long copyright terms.
So I don't see they have either the legal or moral standing to complain about this. They should pay their damned bills, frankly.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Digg can be a neat site for the sheer volume of articles, but it has some serious and aggravating problems. To give one example: it was refreshing to come here this morning and find only one story about the Anonymous protests of Scientology instead of, oh, say, ten.
The Anonymous group seems to have taken a page from Ron Paul supporters: they've positively Digg-bombed the place, putting multiple (and entirely redundant) stories onto the front page, as if this will somehow raise awareness about the CoS amongst a demographic that is vulnerable to the Church's tactics. But they can't do that on Slashdot because of the editorial control here. Add to this the fact that Digg is no longer news for nerds in the way Slashdot is (sports articles now show up with alarming frequency on Digg), and that the comments on Digg absolutely stink compared with those here (yes, they're even worse than ours).
I enjoy Digg for its constant volume of new articles, but Slashdot's articles are much better presented (yes, even with the "teh" in TFA). If this site posted more frequent stories to compete with Digg's volume I'd have little reason to go to Digg. Volume is about the only advantage they have.
shouldn't the MPAA be thanking filesharers, since they're diluting their losses? (just using Hollywood accounting logic here)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
First, as everyone should know: you never, ever sign a contract for royalties on net profit. There will never be ANY net. Period. It is far too easy to make that happen, especially if you are not on equal footing. It doesn't metter what the relationship is, if you are signing a contract where you get royalties for anything, it is always on the gross revenue, never anything else. End of story.
Second. Studios lie about their revenue. The WGA strikes have shown this, and everyone knows it. Everyone knows that they lie about revenue. Essentially what you shuold be doing when you saying when you sign a contract with the studio is this: I get to choose the highest available estimate of revenue as my basis for what you owe me on royalties. If you put out figures claiming the film has grossed $1.2b at the box, then we go by that figure, unless you have other figures that are higher. You can't claim one figure publicly and then sell me on another, lower, figure in private. On the other hand, those in estate situations like this should be able to to demand open accounting on projects. I know I would. If you sell the movie rights to a book, then you should probably say something like: I need to have access to the accounting procedures for complete independent review.
Third, I am also ambiguous about copyright length. I strongly maintain that authors, even those doing work for hire, should retain private copyright. Corporations should not own copyrights in the same way that private authors do. Who then would own the story for Pixar's movie 'Toy Story'? I don't know. I think that when a team of individuals are doing a collaborative work, then the corporation can own the copyright for a period of time not greater than 25 years (or some other period of time). This gives the studio sufficient time to reap profit from works, but then allows them to become public domain in an appropriate fashion. Individuals or private teams (say co-authored works) become copyrighted for the life of the author or primary author. After this time, the estate may continue to produce related material and any new material is under copyright of the new author using their life as the benchmark. I think provisions for the immediate descendents garnering automatic royalties for major deritive works would be appropriate, which would be mean that Tolkien's children would get money for the production of anything made related to Middle Earth, but they would have no control over what actually got made. It would then be up to consumers to decide what was worthy of purchase and what was crap. A rare and shocking concept, true, but I think an important one.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
No that's the actual title of teh movie. They modernized it to get teh kids interested.
Can I bum a sig?
7.5% is actually a hair over $65 million
Meh, it was a poor attempt. Call me when Teh Lol of teh Ringz0rz comes out.
which is totally what she said
Here's basically how it works..
New Line makes movie, movie costs $100MM to make.
Movie is a moderate hit, Movie makes $150 MM in theaters and tie-ins in the first year.
The $150 MM Profit number gets reported by New Line to your little website.
But, there's more...
The actual studio and sound stages aren't owned by New Line, they're owned by New Line Studios and Sound Stages, Inc.
And they must be compensated. $5 MM.
And, of course, the post-production is done by New Line Post Production, Inc.
Andd they must be compensated. $10 MM.
And then there's the TV advertising. This is done by New Line Trailer Production, Inc.
And they must be compensated. $30 MM.
And we can't forget the costs of booking travel and making the logistical operations. This is done by New Line Logistics
And they must be compensated. $5 MM.
And when it's all said and done...
Damn...
The movie JUST broke even.
Sorry little fella, but New Line made a big investment here, and we just don't have the ability to pay you out of our pockets: As it is we just broke even!
Of course, all those Subsidiaries will be kicking most of that back upstairs, but hey, that's THE BIZ!!!!
False quote: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.asp
Lawyers are significantly more evil than the Nazgùl.
Box office receipts = $6 billion
Loss to piracy = -$10 billion
Total gross income = -$3 billion
Sorry, there's no money left.
A couple breaking the promise of marriage, or a parent breaking a promise to their son or daughter is really no different...
Marriage is a tad different, in that the things that are promised ("vowed," which is a word we don't hear often enough without irony) are impossible to promise. You may say you will love, cherish, and respect another until the day you die, but you are not promising something you can, in good faith, honestly *know* you can deliver.
People change. Feelings change. Circumstances change. To promise to love someone forever is not a realistic promise. You can promise to *try*. But you can't promise you *will.* At least, not with any real certainty.
In business (and in promises to kids or spouses about realistic promises), you are promising to deliver something that is within your ability. If you promised something you *can't* deliver, you are a liar. If you renege, you are a cheat (in the case of business).
I do wish there were a code of honor these days, but there isn't. Instead, misinformation, lies, and manipulation are the norm in politics and business. So, why shouldn't it be the norm in our day-to-day lives, as well?
Oh, well. If you do your best to be honorable, I will also do my best to be honorable. If we can get a few hundred thousand to also be honorable, we might be able to change things for the better.
I wouldn't count on it, though.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I thought the Nazgùl were lawyers. Specifically, IBM's.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Now there is a great idea - have Terry Gilliam do the Hobbit. Only the plot would need some twisting to make it into Gilliam territory.
When the dwarves are captured by the elves, at least one needs to die during interrogation while believing that they are escaping. Sting would need to be a vorpal blade. Smaug would swallow its victims and then spit out the bones. Some time travel would be inevitable while leaving Dale. Shelley Duval would make a cameo appearance asking Thorin to return the map. Thorin would become delusional and would try to reach the Mountain in a balloon. It would all end with Bard declaring that he was not the Messiah.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
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,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
/silly
So, I have this idea for a great movie. It's about two gnomes who find a bracelet of power, and they have to take it to the Burning Steppes and cast it into the Cauldron. They form the Brotherhood of the Bracelet. Along the way they're trailed by a murloc named Gottom, who's obsessed with the bracelet, and nine bracelet bogeymen. It could be a three-parter, called 'Ruler of the Bracelet'. The first part would be called 'The Brotherhood of the Bracelet', followed by 'A Couple of Towers', with the climactic ending called 'Hey, the King's Back!'
Golollum: I Haz Teh Precious
Bilolbo: Lost Hobbit is Lost.
Gollum: I Can Has Bilburger?
Bilolbo: I'm In Ur Caves, Tellin' Ur Riddels
Golollum: WANT!
Bilolbo: A Ringz, I Findz It.
Golollum: Nooooes! They Be Stealing Mah Precious!!!
Bilolbo: Invisible Me.
Golollum: Mah Precious, I Mourns It.
Tagged: lolkien, lolbbit, golollum