Hobbit lawsuit update

Remember that lawsuit J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, and his family’s charity, The Tolkien Trust, filed against New Line and Time Warner Inc. for failure to give the Tolkien family their share of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy’s immense profits? Well, it’s still happening.

The gist of the lawsuit is that Christopher Tolkien is suing New Line and Time Warner for 220 million dollars because they reneged on paying the 7.5% profit share the Tolkien family was promised in the original deal J.R.R. Tolkien made when he sold the film rights to the novels forty years ago. What’s more, the family wants to halt production on the currently in pre-production under Guillermo Del Toro prequel THE HOBBIT.

Tolkien and Time Warner have been engaged in settlement talks for quite a while but things aren’t looking too promising and it’s quite possible the case will go to trial. And if that happens, Tolkien’s lawyer, Bonnie Eskenazi, had this to say: “Should this case go all the way through trial, we are confident that New Line will lose its right to release ‘The Hobbit.’” Wowsers.

There’s a hell of a lot more to the lawsuit than that, it seems, and if you’re interested, Bloomberg recently wrote up a very detailed explanation of everything. Check it out over HERE.