The Weinstein Brothers want a cut of the cash that The Hobbit is raking in at the box office, and will battle it out in court to get it. Recently filing a suit against Warner Bros and New Line Cinema, the Weinsteins believe that they are owed for each new release in the Lord of the Rings franchise, and any descendants there after, but Warner Bros thinks otherwise. Apparently it will all come down to the fine print, but even that is a bit sketchy, with a statement by Warner calling Weinstein’s sale of The Hobbit rights, “one of the great blunders in movie history.”
According to the movie studio, the Weinsteins and Miramax only negotiated payment for one film based on The Hobbit, not a trilogy. This would be a blunder indeed, not anticipating that Warner Bros would capitalize on J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation to the fullest extent, after Lord of The Rings’ success at the box office, and all the subsequent dvd’s, box sets, and branded merchandise, they’d want to draw out the story as long as they could.
A new deal is in the works for Bob and Harvey Weinstein, having sold their company Miramax to Disney in 1993, are now signing a new contract reconnecting them with the company they created. With a little bitter blood with the board over creative control (why they left in 2005, and created their own company again, Weinstein Co.), and this new lawsuit, they will no doubt, line-by-line, set things in stone when it comes to what they expect to receive. If they now have Disney’s legal backing, Warner may just have something to worry about.
SOURCE: Huffington Post / LA Times
