  TV Watch: Bob Shaye & Michael Lynne on Charlie Rose
TV Watch: Bob Shaye & Michael Lynne on Charlie Rose Comments Off Entertainment Weekly Talks ‘Hobbit’ – BIGTIME!
“Just a heads up, if case you didn’t know, that there is a huge 7(!) page cover story on the current status of The Hobbit in the Entertainment Weekly which hits newsstands tomorrow (10/05). I would call it cautiously optimistic – confirmation that New Line and PJ apparently are now talking – and a good overall summation of the PJ/New Line/Hobbit situation to date.” The story is now posted at EW.com! Be sure to pick up your copy at news-stands tomorrow! Full Story at EW.com Cover Art Discuss Comments Off New Line Agree to Pay ‘RINGS’ Fine
New Line Agree to Pay ‘RINGS’ Fine Discuss Comments Off New Line Fine: What Does it Mean?
New Line Fine: What Does it Mean? Discuss Comments Off Round one to Jackson in LOTR profits fight
Round one to Jackson in LOTR profits fight Discuss Comments Off The plot of ‘The Hobbit’ thickensObservant Compa_Mighty has now written in with more fresh Hobbit news. Word reached our ears months ago that Sam Raimi would direct “The Hobbit,” but everything seemed to be in flux. In the last 48 hours word has traveled fast that Peter Jackson and New Line were at least on speaking terms. IESB.net is reporting (no source named so tread with caution) that Jackson and Raimi may be on the project. Don’t believe everything you read but this story makes a lot of sense. It also seems that Bob Shaye may have been hinting at this yesterday when he said, “I really respect and admire Peter and would love for him to be creatively involved in some way in ‘The Hobbit.’ “ Notice he didn’t say he would “direct” the film but did say “involved in some way”. Anyway, stay tuned as more clues are uncovered. Comments Off A ray of hope for Jackson fans and the fate of ‘The Hobbit’A keen eyed fellow that goes by Ned sent in a very interesting link from the L.A. Times about New Line and some possible fence mending with Peter Jackson. Jackson is obviously well into pre-production on his “Lovely Bones” project but after that, who knows? The story included this juicy tidbit: “Eager to move ahead with “The Hobbit,” New Line has quietly been trying to mend fences with “Rings” filmmaker Peter Jackson, who has sued the company over his share of profits from the first “Rings” films. When asked if it was true that company insiders had been in talks with Jackson’s reps, Shaye replied, “Yes, that’s a fair statement. Notwithstanding our personal quarrels, I really respect and admire Peter and would love for him to be creatively involved in some way in ‘The Hobbit.’ “ To read the whole interesting story go right here. Comments Off Is New Line brass softening its stance on PJ?TORn friend Mark from Chicago sent along this story from the New York Post and it may signal a softening from the New Line brass about Peter Jackson and a future version of ‘The Hobbit’. It may also be an attempt to smooth the ruffled feathers of fans who may have been bothered when the dispute over the future billion dollar film got a bit personal. The story is about New Line in general but Bob Shaye said, ” “There’s nothing I can really talk about except to say that I believe ‘The Hobbit’ will be made,” says Shaye. “I don’t like to have issues with anybody. Any issues with Mr. Jackson, I would prefer to have them closed, rather than open.” ” Read the full story here. Comments Off Actors’ lawsuit against New Line has ‘absolutely nothing’ to do with Jackson’s
The suit filed by fifteen New Zealand actors over money possibly owed them in a contract dispute involving merchandising has nothing at all to do with New Line’s famous dispute with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson according to the actor who instigated the action.
New Zealand actor Bruce Hopkins (Gamling) informed TheOneRing.net exclusively that the whole suit came about because of a clause in his contract that he took seriously enough to bring to the attention of a lawyer. The process started when Hopkins, aware of a clause in his contract that provided a percentage of merchandising, approached entertainment lawyer Phillip Rosen in Los Angeles and then on legal advice approached other actors who would have a similar contractual clause. After Rosen’s efforts with New Line, the case was taken on by Henry Gradstein, a notable entertainment lawyer who has handled notable royalty accounting cases. As hard as it may be to believe, this has absolutely nothing to do with Peter and New Line or their current situation - Bruce Hopkins – Actor (Gamling in LOTR) “I am a well known litigator who has championed the cause of the little guy,” Gradstein said in a phone interview. “We thought that case was a just cause. When you have a cause that’s the right cause, and it is fair – it’s a David and Goliath story no doubt.“ A studio insider that spoke to TheOneRing.net on condition of anonymity had an entirely different view of things. “New Line bet the house on this film and they put literally hundreds of millions of dollars directly into the New Zealand economy.“ “I personally believe all the people associated with this film have been fairly and adequately compensated for their time and effort and that includes Peter Jackson. To sue the studio because the film was as successful is just plain greed.“ The whole process started after Hopkins’ interactions with Lord of the Rings fans, not the powerful film director.
Initially his cast mates were slow to join the suit, fearing professional retribution. “Many of the actors were cynical and almost not interested, and yes, a number of them feared being blackballed, not just by New Line but by local production companies, as well as being ridiculed locally,” Hopkins said from New Zealand. The story broke when Variety did a story based on the lawsuit filed May 30, in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The lawsuit asks for profits based on the actors’ character’s licenses which were swallowed up by accounting, including “gross participation” fees. According to Gradstein the legal action will take “about a year” to resolve and the contract is pretty clear. He said in such contracts there is often a provision for a distribution fee but such a provision was not present in the contracts in this case, although New Line reportedly still deducted a significant amount of money. “The expenses will always be approximately 104 percent (of the income). It’s Hollywood accounting,” Gradstein said in a story by Associated Press. The expenses will always be approximately 104 percent (of the income). It’s Hollywood accounting - Henry Gradstein – Entertainment Lawyer “The contract is so clear,” Gradstein told TheOneRing.net. Hopkins suspects that the other actors aren’t eager to have their names associated with the press coverage the story is getting. “If anything, being in New Zealand heightens the chances of being struck out (of acting) as it were. We are a small industry down here and there is little work to go around most of the time so to risk being blacklisted here is a death knell to surviving as an actor locally.“ New Line has a company policy of declining comment on existing litigation. According to Gradstein each of the actors stands to make different amounts of money in the lawsuit, according to sales of each character’s image. “Bruce headed the group of actors, Phil Rosen, spent time getting New Line trying to agree so when it was clear that wasn’t going to work they came to me,” Gradstein said. “It took persistence to get it (the case) to me. They did their due diligence.“ According to Gradstein his firm accepts about one of ten cases offered to it. The suit is at least the third over profits from New Line’s Lord of the Rings films. Jackson’s own lawsuit against New Line over profits from DVD sales on the “Fellowship of the Ring” DVD went public when Jackson released a letter through TheOneRing.net detailing why the potential “Hobbit” movie was not going to be made by him in the near future. Producer Saul Zaentz and his Tolkien Enterprises reached settlement with New Line for about $20 million before that dispute reached the legal system. Comments Off New Line’s Shaye won’t yield to JacksonNew Line founder Bob Shaye shows no signs of yielding in the company’s legal squabble with Peter Jackson over profits from “The Lord of the Rings.” In a conversation at AmPav on Tuesday with Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, Shaye said the company had already paid Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, $250 million in profit participation. The clash happened because “one of us has gotten poor counsel,” Shaye said, without elaborating. Co-chief Michael Lynne struck a more upbeat note. “We do want to settle our dispute and I think we will.” A “Hobbit” pic is still in the plans, both execs were coy about reports that Sam Raimi is being lined up to direct. “There’s never been any announcement,” Lynne said. “Like a lot of people, he might,” Shaye added. [More] Comments Off Peter Jackson vs. New LineNew Line’s option to make The Hobbit expires in 2009; maybe they don’t think Peter Jackson can get the movie made in time. The company is also already turning its attention to another mega-budgeted fantasy franchise, the His Dark Materials trilogy. But the studio’s motivations became more clear in January, when New Line co-CEO Robert Shaye couldn’t refrain from a retort. “I do not want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me. It will never happen during my watch,” he said, and then referred to Jackson as “misinformed” and “myopic.” [More] Comments Off Greg Wright Talks ‘THE HOBBIT’“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Mark Twain wrote after the New York Journal erroneously covered news of his demise. “Mistaken publications of obituaries aren’t as rare as you might expect,” observes The Phrase Finder. We might say the same for the frequency with which greenlit film projects never see the light of a projector lamp, or the number of times “dead” film projects are resurrected. The scuttlebutt now, of course, as we all know, is that New Line Cinema has greenlit The Hobbit, but that both Peter Jackson and New Line head Robert Shaye declare that Jackson will not be at the helm of the project. At the heart of the issue, at least publicly, is the lawsuit Jackson and company have filed against New Line over profits from the ancillary rights to The Fellowship of the Ring. Jackson has said he “won’t discuss making the [Hobbit] movies until the lawsuit is resolved,” and Shaye has gone so far as to declare that he doesn’t “want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me… It will never happen during my watch.” Complicating perception of the truth is Saul Zaentz’ assertion that The Hobbit “will definitely be shot by Peter Jackson.” What’s really being waged is not a fractious legal dispute. The real battle is a tussle over public opinion. No matter how badly all the parties might want The Hobbit to happen, and for Peter Jackson to be at the helm, they all also know that, until a film actually starts shooting, all bets are off. Even at that point, studios have been known to replace directors. So in the meantime, everyone’s jockeying for influence, control, and as big a share of the pie as possible. And what all the parties involved want to do is avoid pissing off the fans, upon whom all future largesse depends. In this case, what that means is preparing us all for the worst possible scenario, whether it plays out or not. And my guess is that both Jackson and Shaye are pretty chafed that Zaentz has been the most forthcoming about the truth of the situation. “Next year The Hobbit rights will fall back to my company,” he told the German website Elbenwald in November. “I suppose that Peter will wait because he knows that he will make the best deal with us. And he is fed up with the studios: to get his profit share on the Rings trilogy he had to sue New Line. With us, in contrast, he knows that he will be paid fairly and artistically supported without reservation.” The anxiety over the fate of Jackon’s association with The Hobbit began, for me, the night that The Return of the King won 11 Oscars. This is not, contrary to what some may think, the kind of event that brings glee to men like Robert Shaye. Yes, they are thrilled that their films win such accolades; but when the director’s fee for a follow-up project is guaranteed to skyrocket in the wake of such success, studio heads start to seethe. So immediately after the 2004 Oscars ceremony, the tough money was on the boxoffice results of King Kong: if that film mimicked The Lord of the Rings’ wild financial success, Shaye and New Line were over a barrel; if it tanked, Jackson would have huge contract concessions to make. Sure, Jackson didn’t get the call from New Line’s honchos about The Hobbit that he hoped for during that period; but he wasn’t exactly knocking at their door, either. So when it became clear to Jackson that New Line wasn’t only stalling, but that they were also stiffing him to the tune of tens of millions of dollars due to the corporate practice of “self-dealing”—granting no-bid merchandising rights to members of its own broad corporate umbrella—he decided to up the ante, filing a lawsuit against New Line on February 28, 2005, according to The New York Times. When, in actuality, King Kong proved neither a blockbuster nor a dog during the winter of 2005, the waters just got muddied. The fact that conversations had been stalled so long waiting on the outcome of Kong didn’t help, nor did the fact that both sides knew what the mutual silence was all about. All in all, there was nothing left but discontent on all sides. The business being what it is, this is a story that is far from being over; and given that there are not just one but two studios involved, the political jockeying is far more complex than in most cases. My guess is that Zaentz is a lot closer to right than either Jackson or Shaye would like to admit—and that Shaye may regret the vitriol of his rhetoric. “There’s a certain piggishness involved here,” an unidentified New Line lawyer told The New York Times back in 1995. “New Line already gave [Jackson] enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it’s still not enough for him.” When Shaye recently said, “[Jackson] thinks that we owe him something after we’ve paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars,” you know who Shaye has been talking to. The smart money is on Jackson making both The Hobbit and the other planned film, and making them with New Line. Will that take place “on Shaye’s watch”? Maybe not. But since New Line has got corporate masters who may be even more demanding than Shaye, that may just mean bad news for Shaye—and good news for Tolkien film fans. As to the wisdom of making two movies out of The Hobbit rather than just one, that’s quite a different matter. Without yet getting into the structure that such films might assume, it’s fair to say that Tolkien wouldn’t have written the same story that he did had he written it subsequent to The Lord of the Rings. First, we know that, when Tolkien began writing The Hobbit, he had no intention of it becoming a part of the history of Middle-earth. Second, we know that Tolkien had to later revise The Hobbit to make it consistent with his masterwork, retooling Bilbo’s riddle game with Gollum. Third, we know that Tolkien had to temporarily suspend work on Rings in order to work out exactly how characters like Elrond, Gandalf, Aragorn, and the Hobbits themselves fit into his broader mythology. Fourth, we know that Tolkien gave up writing a Rings sequel because the material simply became “too dark.” Complicating matters is the general perception amongst many fans—a sentimental, romanticized, and unexamined perception—that The Hobbit is a light, whimsical fantasy. It is not. It is, in fact, an allegorical bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale, a story of loss of innocence. It’s about children no longer covering their eyes in terror and imagining giants and bogies, but rather coming to see the world with eyes wide open and finding out that the most dangerous monsters may be some of their fellow adventurers. The conventions of fantasy may dispose of Smaug quite neatly; dealing with Thorin—or Bilbo’s own complicity in a Great Wrong—is another matter entirely, but one which is at the heart of The Hobbit. Given that The Lord of the Rings has already come to the screen, though (and stupendously so), we have already seen how blithe young Hobbits such as Pippin must learn to become grave warriors; we have already witnessed the darkness of battles like that at the Pelennor; through Théoden, we have already witnessed sleepers waking to the harsh reality of betrayal and self-deception; we have, in short, already lost the innocence of Middle-earth. Trying to recapture it—on a scale that would duplicate the boxoffice success of Rings—would be a bit like returning to fifth-grade summer camp after a stint in college. So two choices present themselves: first, scale back the design of The Hobbit as Lord of the Rings Lite for the younger set, and hope that Peter Jackson’s fans have all spawned their own sets of Hobbit-sized kindergarteners who will be thrilled with a Curious George version of Middle-earth; or second, embrace the tone of the last third of The Hobbit and integrate the tale seamlessly with Peter Jackson’s other films. Boxoffice potential almost dictates the wisdom of the latter choice, regardless of the “violence” it does to Tolkien’s original tale. If the first approach is taken, however, it would allow—perhaps even necessitate—all of the major roles to be recast. In order to see Gandalf in an entirely different light, for instance, a new Gandalf might be required. When pursuing this line of thinking, the financial wheels start turning, and we can pretty easily envision a project of this flavor if New Line somehow manages to go ahead without Peter Jackson (and the wallets of Jackson’s dedicated and thoroughly adult fanbase), especially considering that Jackson would never make such a film. The second approach, though, begs for McKellan to return as Gandalf, Serkis as Gollum, and Holm as Bilbo—who, we must remember, convincingly played the younger Bilbo in Jackon’s “flashback” scenes as well as the opening sequences of Fellowship. It also opens up intriguing possibilities for the proposed second Hobbit film—which, by the way, I think is a brilliant concept. Fans of The Lord of the Rings, the book, know that there’s a wealth of historical detail that’s left entirely out of Peter Jackson’ films. In particular, the length of time between Bilbo’s departure from Hobbiton and Frodo’s is collapsed to mere weeks rather than years. This presents a fantastic opportunity to create a narrative—once again temporally collapsed, as with Jackson’s trilogy—that tells both the tale of Sauron’s abandonment of Dol Guldur and the long search for Gollum. The added bonus? Added roles for Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, Liv Tyler as Arwen, Hugo Weaving as Elrond, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, and Orlando Bloom as Legolas—maybe even John Rhys-Davies as Gimli. All of these characters were alive during the period of The Hobbit, and were certainly active during the period between the two tales. Heck, we might even get a major role for Craig Parker again as Haldir, which would make his subsequent death in The Two Towers all that more poignant. And these are two films that Jackson should be the one to make, and ones that I would look forward to seeing. Yet it behooves the fan base, I think, not to become too territorial with the intellectual rights to The Hobbit. The film production business is as wild and wooly as the American West (or the Far East of Middle-earth) once was. When on the frontier, wizards and artists will do what artists and wizards must; the best that we, the fans, can hope for is to voice our concerns—and then, for lightning to strike twice. Greg Wright is the author of Tolkien in Perspective: Sifting the Gold from the Glitter, and is Writer in Residence at Puget Sound Christian College in Everett, Washington. Formerly Contributing Editor at Hollywood Jesus, Greg’s collected essays on Tolkien and Jackson have just been republished in a new archive at the site. Greg is now Managing Editor of Gospelcom’s movie review site Past the Popcorn. Comments Off This site is maintained and updated by fans of The Lord of the Rings, and is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. We in no way claim the artwork displayed to be our own. Copyrights and trademarks for the books, films, articles, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law. Design and original photography however are copyright © 1999-2011 TheOneRing.net. Binary hosting provided by Nexcess.net.
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Morgan writes: Just sending a heads up on last night’s Charlie Rose show. He interviewed Bob Shaye (and Michael Lynne) of New Line and asked all about Peter Jackson and his involvement in The Hobbit…Ringers may find it very interesting to see Shaye look uncomfortable with the questions.
Kiwi director Peter Jackson has won the first round in his fight with Hollywood studio New Line Cinema over profits from The Lord of the Rings. A judge has fined New Line, the film trilogy’s financial backer, $US125,000 ($NZ169,000) for failing to turn over court-ordered documents in the case. The Hollywood Reporter said Jackson’s lawyers might also be allowed to inspect New Line’s files if the studio did not produce several audits within 21 days. New Line must also hire an outsider to collect electronic documents, including e-mails, it said.
“Quite honestly it was getting out to fan conventions where I saw the dedication of the fans and the amount of merchandise that was being dealt with, that I began to want some indication of how this reflected in terms of the merchandise clause I had in my contract. There were no other residual clauses in the contract so this stuck out for me,” said Hopkins.