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Warner Bros., Tolkien Estate Settle $80 Million 'Hobbit' Lawsuit (hollywoodreporter.com)
Five years later and it appears Warner Bros. and the estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien have settled their lawsuit over the digital exploitation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. "The Tolkien Estate and book publisher HarperCollins filed a $80 million lawsuit in 2012 alleging that Warners, its New Line subsidiary and Rings/Hobbit rightsholder Saul Zaentz Co. infringed copyright and breached contract by overstepping their authority," reports Hollywood Reporter. "The plaintiffs claimed that a decades-old rights agreement entitled the studio to create only 'tangible' merchandise based on the books, not other digital exploitations that the estate called highly offensive." From the report: The lawsuit brought the two sides into a new battle. Previously, New Line and the Tolkien Estate had fought over profit participation, coming to a deal in 2009 pegged as being worth more than $100 million. As Warner Bros. readied a Peter Jackson big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit, the Tolkien Estate began investigating digital exploitations when its attorney received a spam e-mail about the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Online Slot Game. The subsequent complaint filed in court talked about irreparable harm to Tolkien's legacy and reputation from the prospect of everything from online games to housing developments. In reaction, Warner Bros. filed counterclaims, alleging that repudiation of a 1969 contract and 2010 regrant caused the studio to miss out on millions in Hobbit licensing and decreased exposure to the Jackson films. Warners contended that digital exploitations was both customary and within its scope of rights. Those counterclaims became the subject of a side fight over whether Warners could sue for being sued. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Warner Bros. had properly asserted contract claims.
... but the comments are garbage, so I'll just add to the landfill:
I watched the trilogy last year and it's a goddam fucked up waste of time.
The first movie was interesting.
The second went off on some tangential plot of vacuousness and the third didn't have many of the original characters and an impotent, wimpy, fizzle of an ending.
I don't really care who got what out of the LOTR deal because I only think of myself and I didn't get shit.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Unless Warner starts buying up comic book companies
Warner's DC Comics division has bought Charlton, Fawcett, EC (Mad), Quality, and others.
This shows how the plutocracy can economically pressure artists, appropriate their work, and suppress their message, and spit on them as their work makes tons of money they will never more than a penny of.
The significance of Tolkein's work is ground-shattering.
It embodies every value our civilization was built on, most of which are presently being torn to shreds by the media machine and its...associates...and their other businesses.
It's potential to inspire people against the status quo is enormous. So much so that it's a very real danger to the system.
The main purpose of the creation of the movies was not just to accumulate a mountain of gold, it was to suppress the message of the book and prevent a generation of young people from being truly inspired by it.
The story is similar with the burst of 'fantasy' genre fiction. Instead of allowing Tolkien the possibility to promote his book freely, the publishing industry, horrified by the success of Lord of the Rings, sprang to generate a wave of vacuous bullshit to choke its potential to spread.
Most people are not too smart, they think something like 'OH FANTASY, I KNOW THAT SHIT, SWORDS AND MAGIC AND SHIT, AND MIDGETS SMOKE WEED LMFAO', and that's exactly what the film and publishing industries, and their common associates, want.
Lord of the Rings is an order of magnitude above the rest. It's not 'fantasy' genre fiction, it's literary monolith, a mythology for the ages.
If you dig into this story and ask yourself some hard questions, the story around the treatment of the Lord of the Rings can open your eyes to how this society works, for who, and why.
A single, 3 hour movie would've done the story well enough (sans the padding, the Sauron backstory fan service, etc.). A two movie set (2 hours each, max.) could've given the story the properly padded, "Jackson" treatment without wasting our time.
Instead, we got a "profits before quality" trilogy that I'll never watch again. As a whole, it's the Tolkien equivalent of the Star Wars prequels - only it actually got worse as it went.
Parody is protected by (US, at least) Copyright Law.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Regardless of what side one might be on, or where one stands on the issues, one has to admit, the lawsuits have been every much as entertaining as the movies.
I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that if anything has caused irreparable harm to Tolkien's legacy over the years, it was Christopher's whining.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As a point of interest, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Fogerty (leader of Credence Clearwater Revival) wrote a song back in the 1980s about Saul Zaentz himself. Called "Zanz Kant Danz", it had lyrics like "Zanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money. Watch him or he'll rob you blind." Zaentz sued and a settlement forced Fogerty to rename the song "Vanz Kant Danz". Zaentz was pretty infamous in his day for his treatment of Credence. In an industry known for abusing its artists their record deal was infamously bad, called by some the worst deal in the entire industry for a major band. To be somewhat fair to Zaentz, Fogerty agreed to this deal and his agreement with his bandmates gave him the authority to do so. Fogerty has a real problem, in my opinion, of refusing to accept any responsibility himself for bad decisions he made, such as allowing Zaentz to siphon off band royalties into an off shore trust that didn't seem to accomplish anything but transfer their wealth to him. Zaentz was not a good guy at all and I can't say I'm surprised that approximately 3 years after his death he somehow is part of a lawsuit alleging infringement and a contract breach. If there was anybody who could cause legal problems from the grave, he'd be the guy.
They were trying to avoid their IP being associated with gambling. Now I'm not a fan of absurdly long copyright terms, but even less a fan of using children's books to get kids into gambling.
Far more tacky, it was an Online Slot Game (screenshots are available for the brave). I'm sure Tolkien would have included them in The Scouring of the Shire. "And take your infernal contraptions with you," said Frodo as he hurled the last of the slot machines at Lotho Sackville-Baggins' rapidly retreating back.
Lord Of The Rings was written in 1949 - shouldn't it be public domain by now?
Why should "the family" benefit from a creators product when said creator is long dead? Wasn't the aim of copyright a temporary right to enrich the creator, so they will create more?
It seems fairly unlikely JRR Tolkien will write anything else. The encouragement isn't going to work.
"Cats like plain crisps"
Tolkien sold rights to the movies only, not rights for Lord of the Rings themed online gambling, which is what the dispute is about, not parodies.
Meanwhile in lottery commissions across the country, government employees are trying their damnedest to figure out how to get those kids to gamble. Lottery revenues are trending down in most states, especially those that for many years got fat on the Video Poker gravy train. Millennials - but especially those for whom smartphones have been around most of their lives - aren't gambling in nearly the same numbers as their elders. And for states who rely on lottery revenue to fund basic services, this has them terrified.
Which is leading to a nationwide push to "modernize" video gambling so that the younger generations take it up. School funding depends on it.