The recent web chat with Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro got many
a One Ring fan’s heart beating fast. But even as our heroes – one a
self-proclaimed hobbit and the other a self-identified dwarf – prepare
to mount their epic quest to make two more Middle Earth movies, someone
seeks to block their way: J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher.
Cinematical passes along the story that Tolkien will go to court on June 6th in what he calls “one last crusade”
in a very ornery battle with New Line over profits from the Lord of the
Rings films. Tolkien says he is still owed 80 million pounds under a
deal from 1969… one that he argues will give him the right to
“terminate” the film of The Hobbit. It’s also unclear whether he can
block filmmaker access to The Silmarillion, which is thought to
include story elements that may end up in the sequel to The Hobbit, now
known only as Film Two.
Tolkien is sadly likely right about the money owed him; let’s hope
Warner Bros just ponies up the cash and denies him any legal leg upon
which to be a curmudgeon.