Hobbit Contract Dispute

If you braved the lines, you may have already seen Peter Jackson’s latest blockbuster, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which was released at midnight last night. The movie is the subject of a lawsuit filed this week in a New York state court. Bob and Harvey Weinstein, founders of Weinstein Co., are suing Warner Bros. over proceeds from the second installment of the three-part Hobbit film saga. Bob and Harvey Weinstein sold the film rights to J.R.R. Tolkein’s fantasy books, and received proceeds from the 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Now they claim that they have rights to proceeds from Smaug, as well as to The Hobbit: There and Back Again, which is set to be released in December 2014. Warner Bros. disputes this claim, saying that the Weinsteins made an exceptionally poor contract when they agreed to proceeds from only one film.

You can read more about the dispute in the New York Times and in The Hollywood Reporter. You can track the docket of the case (Docket #161383/2013) on Bloomberg Law.

Photo credit: www.thehobbitblog.com