New Line Cinema only recently settled a lawsuit filed by Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, that was supposed to clear things up between the studio and the filmmaker and open the way to production on Jackson's version of The Hobbit. Now the studio has been hit by a suit by heirs of J. R. R. Tolkien and a group of publishers who are looking to tap the studio for millions. Also waiting for their day in court: the Saul Zaentz Company, which once upon a time owned the film rights to Tolkien's work--they sold them to Miramax, which in turn sold them to New Line, and which has already had its own complicated round of legal action with New Line — and "sixteen New Zealand actors who appear in supporting parts in the films, who last year charged New Line with bilking them of a share in an estimated $100 million profit from the sale of video games, caps and other film-related merchandise." As The New York Times reports, "the trilogy may be turning into the first true cinematic 'franchise' for local legal representatives. The lawsuits, to some extent, have fed one another, and are providing a feast for those who bill by the hour."
Much of the — let's be generous and call it "miscommunication" — between all these warring parties may come down to New Line's status as an "independent studio", albeit one owned by Time Warner, which has its own manner of accounting for international revenue that differs from that of the major, worldwide studios. That's cold comfort for New Line when it considers the full ramifications of the Tolkien family suit, which "has the earmarks of a public relations nightmare." The studio stands accused of shafting the heirs of a beloved author, including a charitable trust whose revenues go to various very good causes, by ignoring a long-standing agreement regarding the money they were to receive from any film adaptations of the Rings books. Bonnie Eskenazi one of the lawyers for the Tolkien forces, has said that her clients waited so many years before filing suit because they were innocent enough to think that the greedy movie hustlers could be dealt with on a reasonable level, without bringing lawyers into it: "They do things politely, in a certain manner," she said, a statement that for all the sense it will make to most lawyers in the greater Los Angeles area might as well have been issued in Esperantu. Certainly it seems a long, long time ago that the Rings movie project smacked anyone of a risky financial venture. It'll be the ultimate sick joke about Hollywood accounting if the comparatively modest follow-up project The Hobbit never gets off the ground because New Line can't get everyone paid to the courts' satisfaction.