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Warner Bros Fires Back At ‘Hobbit’ Creator’s Estate & Publisher In $80M Case

By DOMINIC PATTEN | Wednesday March 13, 2013 @ 3:35pm PDTTags: Big Deals Film, The Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings, Warner Bros

Warner Bros says a multimillion-dollar merchandising lawsuit from the estate of Lord of The Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien and publisher HarperCollins has hurt it financially, undermined its rights to the author’s properties, and it wants big bucks in damages. “Counterclaim Defendants are simply attempting to extract additional huge sums of money for rights and/or take back rights that they had already granted,” the studio says in documents (read them here) filed this week in federal court. While damages are not specified in the counterclaim, the request for a jury trial does state that Warner Bros lost millions in license fees because of the fallout from the rights dispute. The claims by the studio come almost five months after the Tolkien Estate Ltd, its trustees and News Corp-owned publisher sued Warners, its New Line subsidiary and The Saul Zaentz Company’s Middle-earth Enterprises division in an $80 million copyright infringement and breach of contract dispute over video games, online slot machines and other digital merchandising. That legal move occurred just under a month before the first movie in the Warner Bros-distributed and Peter Jackson-directed trilogy The Hobbit hit the big screen December 14. The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, directed by Jackson, has made almost $3 billion in worldwide box office. READ MORE »

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R.I.P. Mike Hopkins

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday December 31, 2012 @ 12:08am PSTTags: R.I.P., The Lord Of The Rings

Oscar-winning sound editor Mike Hopkins drowned in an accident while he and friends were rafting in the Tararua Range in northern New Zealand. Hopkins, 53, was found dead by a helicoptor rescue team after an inflatable … Read More »

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Warner Bros Sued For $80M By J.R.R Tolkien Estate & Publisher

By DOMINIC PATTEN | Monday November 19, 2012 @ 7:07pm PSTTags: Big Deals Film, Lawsuit, The Lord Of The Rings, Warner Bros

The estate of Lord Of The Rings author J.R.R Tolkien went after Warner Bros today in an $80 million lawsuit over online slot machines and other digital merchandising. In the complaint (read it here), the Tolkien Estate Ltd, its trustees and News Corp-owned publisher HarperCollins have charged the studio, its New Line subsidiary and The Saul Zaentz Company’s Middle-earth Enterprises division with copyright infringement and breach of contract. It’s not the hugely successful movies they’re fighting over this time. Now its merchandising that the estate says was never anticipated as part of its original deal back in 1969. “The original contracting parties thus contemplated a limited grant of the right to sell consumer products of the type regularly merchandised at the time (such as figurines, tableware, stationery items, clothing and the like). They did not include any grant of exploitations such as electronic or digital rights, rights in media yet to be devised or other intangibles such as rights in services,” says the 26-page complaint. This legal move comes just under a month before the first movie in the Warner Bros-distributed and Peter Jackson-directed trilogy The Hobbit hits the big screen December 14. The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, directed by Jackson, has made almost $3 billion in worldwide box office. Read More »

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