Lord Of The Rings: Tolkien’s Heirs Sue The Arse Off New Line

We've often thought about suing the studio behind Lord Of The Rings, but that's mainly because Return Of The King was so turgid that it was all we could do not to try and suffocate ourselves in the middle of the second act.

However, a group of JRR Tolkien heirs called the Tolkien Trust has decided to sue the Lord Of The Rings studio for a slightly more pressing matter - it's claiming that New Line owes it $150 million in unpaid royalties.

Of course, $150 million is a lot of money, and if New Line is forced to pay it to the Tolkien Trust, one of its upcoming films might gave to be cancelled. So, if it's the sequel to The Golden Compass, everybody wins.

The Lord Of The Rings trilogy has so far made about $6 billion in box office and DVD receipts - a staggering amount of money, especially when you realise that it was generated by three pain-inducingly long films about a wizard and a midget walking across the side of a mountain and occasionally watching Liv Tyler babble on in a made-up language. 

And when something makes that much money, there will always be people trying to claw themselves a share of it. Peter Jackson sued New Line over cash in 2005, 15 actors from New Zealand sued New Line over Lord Of The Rings cash last year, and now some people who are probably a bit related to Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien are suing New Line for a wedge of the cash, too.

Back in 1969, members of the Tolkien Trust signed a contract with United Artists that guaranteed them 7.5% of the gross receipts of any Lord Of The Rings movies, a contract which passed down to New Line when it inherited the movie rights in 1998. Cue angry poshos, courtesy of the New York Times:

In a complaint filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, trustees of the Tolkien Trust, a British charity, joined trustees of a private family trust of Tolkien heirs and the British arm of HarperCollins Publishers in suing New Line Cinema for breach of contract. Charging “unabashed and insatiable greed,” … in the complaint, the plaintiffs argue that New Line has “clearly engaged in the infamous practice of creative ‘Hollywood accounting,’ ” by excluding certain revenue from calculations and racking up costs that have so far prevented the studio from paying out a single dime.

However, as much as you're probably naturally predisposed to stick up for the tiny underdogs tugging at the shirt-tails of a $6 billion machine, know this - if the Tolkien Trust is successful it wants to hoik away New Line's rights to make the long-anticipated Hobbit movies as well. And since they're likely to be among the top-grossing films of the next decade, New Line has every reason to be worried.

Imagine what the world would be like if the Hobbit movies didn't get made. Imagine how dreadful it'd be not to go and spend £10 of your hard-earned money to watch an offensively long movie about a midget walking to a dragon's house  for no other reason than because the months and months of relentless hype have bullied you into it. Twice. Imagine how dreadful that'd be. Dreadful.

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Tolkien Heirs Sue New Line Over Millions From ‘Rings’ - New York Times