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        20050628   

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money." - Senator Everett Dirksen (1896 - 1969)
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Continuing in their typical me me me fashion, it appears that big movie houses don't quite agree with things when tables are turned against them. Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is suing New Line Cinemas for underpaying him by as much as $100 million dollars. Their response?
"We don't agree with plaintiff's claims, and will defend ourselves vigorously." A litigator for New Line, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is working on this lawsuit, said the money paid to Mr. Jackson so far is in line with the contract he signed.

"Peter Jackson is an incredible filmmaker who did the impossible on 'Lord of the Rings,' " this lawyer said. "But there's a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."
I, for one, feel as though I've given the movie houses enough money to rebuild all of Iraq (well, me and all the movie-going public, that is). Does that mean I get to call the MPAA piggish?

Of key concern here is just more of your typical corporate swashbuckling, the subsidiary-swing as it were, aka the subdivision-salsa:
What makes Mr. Jackson's suit draw such widespread interest here, other than his clout in the industry and the amount at stake, is one specific allegation about New Line's behavior. The suit charges that the company used pre-emptive bidding (meaning a process closed to external parties) rather than open bidding for subsidiary rights to such things as "Lord of the Rings" books, DVD's and merchandise. Therefore, New Line received far less than market value for these rights, the suit says.

Most of those rights went to other companies in the New Line family or under the Time Warner corporate umbrella, like Warner Brothers International, Warner Records and Warner Books. So while the deals would not hurt Time Warner's bottom line, they would lower the overall gross revenues related to the film, which is the figure Mr. Jackson's percentage is based on.
Granted, the $200 million Jackson has puportedly already been paid off of the $1 billion New Line grossed is a pretty hefty sum and it is hard to feel sorry for him when I look at my paltry paycheck, he is nevertheless entitled to expect fair business practices from his corporate partners. When the overall gross of the trilogy is $4 billion, and Jackson contracted for 20%, that $200 million starts to look kind of small.

His lawyer suggests he was underpaid by as much as $100 million.

UPDATE - 06.28.2005 05:15 PM EST: Slashdot just posted a Q&A with Wil Wheaton (The actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, TNG. his blog is at WilWheaton.Net). A question on-topic with this post was posed by a reader and Wil's response was, well.. in line with Jackson's:
Ok I've been itching to ask this to a real actor who also happens to be a geek.

You know MPAA's been suing left and right claiming downloading movies are damaging to the industry as a whole. As an actor in probably the most popular science fiction series ever, how does piracy or file sharing affect you and your bottom line?

[Do you think what] the studios say about piracy is total bull? Or is it the truth?

WW: I think it's bull. I've only had profit-sharing in one movie, and according to the studio it never made a profit *cough*bullshit*cough*.


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