New Line Ends "Hobbit" Fellowship with Oscar Winning Director Jackson

The Hollywood rag of record daily Variety reports that New Line cinema honcho Robert Shaye has it in for Peter Jackson. Rarely in Hollywod history has a cinema studio head sounded more petulant about a filmmaker that made him a household word in the industry, as well as over a billion dollars.

Shaye, a featured player in the greenlighting and executive production of Return of the King,The Two Towers, and Fellowship of the Rings, is very upset that Peter Jackson simply doesn't give up his lawsuit . if it without without legal basis, many wonder, why then New Line not provide ample accounting of the film profits? This item is not clarified in any of Shaye's statements.

The producer of the Tolkien series of movies, in a disastrous publicity gaffe, has attempted to poison the waters of Hollywood and the public's mind against Jackson, a popular filmmaker and hero to many Tolkien fans the world over. Shaye has formally announced he will not entertain Peter Jackson's directing the prequel unless Jackson forfeits his lawsuits for New Line accounting practices.

Why doesn't new line respond to the lawsuits in court? Why would any producer expect a director to enter into a new contactual agreement when the old ones were not settled? Why Bob Shaye, who is the head of New Line Cinema, had decided to make these statements in this manner is not clear.

Shaye wasn't complaining in the last several years, when New Line, which produced the Lord of the Rings films, won big at the box office and garnered a windfall of cash and critical awards for Jackson's films. The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) director, delivered in an amazing and much chronicled feat an autuerish and brilliant delivery of what many said was an impossible to film series of books.

New Line Cinema, the studio which controls the rights to The Hobbit until 2009, has been sued by Peter Jackson because the money just doesn't add up. It seems New Line Cinema may be trying to cover up some questionable accouting practices with a strategy. Jackson can't keep suing, it is assumed, if he wants the Hobbit movie.