A quick rundown: the Tolkien Trust is suing New Line, Fox
is suing Warner Bros. over
Watchmen,
The Passion of
the Christ screenwriter is suing
Mel Gibson,
and Nicolas Cage
is courting
Kathleen Turner. It’s going to take an army of Michael Claytons to untangle
the legal messes Hollywood has tumbled into this week.
According to
Variety, the Tolkien Trust and publisher HarperCollins is suing New Line
for $150 million. The plaintiffs claim that the Trust (a charity run by
Tolkien’s children) has yet to receive any money from the 7.5% gross profit
participation deal they inked with movie studios in 1969. The lawsuit also aims
to halt production on
The Hobbit.
"New Line has brought new meaning to the phrase ‘creative
accounting,’" said Tolkien Trust representative Bonnie Eskenazi. "I cannot
imagine how on earth New Line will argue to a jury that these films could gross
literally billions of dollars, and yet the creator’s heirs, who are entitled to
a share of gross receipts, don’t get a penny."
In a curiously late-game move,
Hollywood Reporter writes that Fox is suing Warner Bros. over
Watchmen, seeking to
prevent Warners with going forward on the project. Fox claims that they acquired
the movie rights in the late 1980s along with screenplays written by
Charles
McKeown and Sam
Hamm. Studios can adapt Watchmen so long as they pay Fox a buy-out
price, which the lawsuit claims Warner Bros. has not done.
Just as writers were starting to get their
dues, here comes this bit of sunshine from
People.com:
The Passion
of the Christ screenwriter
Benedict
Fitzgerald is suing director
Mel Gibson for
$5 million, charging that Gibson bilked him of money by lying about the film’s
budget. Fitzgerald says that he was paid $75,000 for his services, had to borrow
$200,000 from Gibson to cover expenses, and was told that the budget was between
$4 million to $7 million, whereas it was actually more towards the $50 million
range.
An Icon (Gibson’s production company) attorney claims
Fitzgerald "was handsomely compensated — a very significant amount of money for
any writer on any project."
Finally,
Defamer notes that Nicolas Cage is entering celebrity legal deathmatch
with Kathleen
Turner over her tell-all autobiography which, amidst tales of Hollywood
debauchery and a drug-addled Anthony Perkins, paints Cage as a drunk and
easily-tempted dognapper. Cage has issued this statement:
I have never been arrested for anything in my life, nor
have I stolen a dog. I am reaching out to my fans — many of whom are children
so that they know that I do not condone drunk driving or theft. The reason why
you’ve never seen a mug shot of me is because it does not exist.
Cage is suing for defamation, libel and slander. The two
co-starred in the 1986
Francis
Ford Coppola comedy,
Peggy Sue Got
Married.
