New Line lawsuits

As profitable as THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy was, it’s becoming more of a curse to New Line. First, Peter Jackson slaps them with a grand daddy lawsuit for presumably withholding profits on the first installment in the franchise, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. Then, Saul Zaentz, who had held the rights to JRR Tolkien’s books since 1976, smacks them with a cool twenty million dollar suit for royalties he claimed he had not received. And now, to put the icing on their legal cake, fifteen New Zealand-based actors who appeared in the trilogy are suing them for money withheld from merchandise. The actors claim the studio reneged on a stipulation in their contract to give them five percent of a presumed hundred million in merchandise profits and instead took “gross participation fees” that chewed profits owed to them. Will this affect production of THE HOBBIT feature? Not likely. There’s still big fat wads of cash to be made from this franchise. Thanks to Lee for the heads up.