ROTTEN TOMATOES: Lawsuit-o-Rama: The Hobbit, Watchmen, Passion of the Christ, and Nic Cage!

Lawsuit-o-Rama: The Hobbit, Watchmen, Passion of the Christ, and Nic Cage!

Play nice, celebs!

by Alex Vo | February 12, 2008

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.

(1-20 of 22 posts) | Reply

slip writes:
on Feb 12 2008 11:41 AM

what i dont understand is why fox decided now of all times to decide to sue, the only thing i can think of is that warner bros didnt know or promised to pay later and never did either case its an odd time to decide to sue, they probably should've sued before they started shooting the film, which will still probably come out on its original date of march 2009. as for the tolkien bit, it doesnt surprise me if new line did in fact screw them out of money, they did it to peter jackson, they'll do it to people who weren't even involved...

(Reply to this)

jokerboy1991 writes:
on Feb 12 2008 11:47 AM

This better not stop WATCHMEN from being finished, its the best book ever. P.S. Passion of The Christ sucked.

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jokerboy1991 writes:
on Feb 12 2008 11:49 AM

Also Kathleen Turner leave Cage alone, that sounds ridiculos what you're saying.

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Oblivioncry writes:
on Feb 12 2008 11:50 AM

if the tolkien trust really deserves the money then they should get it...but if it means that the hobbit will be stopped then i really wouldnt like it much.

and btw who of cage's young fans would read turner's autobiography??
btw: why would ANYBODY would want to read it....

(Reply to this)

tkl0085 writes:
on Feb 12 2008 12:19 PM

passion was perfect, just depends on your convictions when going in.

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lestatthevampire writes:
on Feb 12 2008 01:58 PM

Peggy Sue's Divorce Gets Messy.

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jokerboy1991 writes:
on Feb 12 2008 02:28 PM

In reply to this comment (#1570439)
PASSION was a huge peice of crap. It was SAW and HOSTEL, but staring JESUS. It just shows him getting tortured the whole time. If you wanna see a real movie about JESUS see THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, now thats a great movie.

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sfsilver writes:
on Feb 12 2008 04:24 PM

Self righteous Mel cheats partner - what a shocker!

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Che Che writes:
on Feb 12 2008 04:48 PM

In reply to this comment (#1570623)
ROFLMAO! Jokerboy1991 - I had to email that out to my friends.

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Amalgamate writes:
on Feb 12 2008 05:17 PM

passion was a snuff film-pretty gross

I'm just glad it didn't show the zombie jesus which is the most ridiculous part of the whole story...

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Thundaar writes:
on Feb 12 2008 07:02 PM

Passion was great IMO. It basically depicted a real event exactly the way it happened - but I will admit Passion is not for everyone. From the comments above, I am guessing I may be in the minority opinion on this. So be it.

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CalvinandHobbes23 writes:
on Feb 12 2008 08:19 PM

why is the tolkien trust suing New line now,
why not six years ago???

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lpbreeze writes:
on Feb 12 2008 08:41 PM

yah wtf is up with these late lawsuits. Geez do it earlier people. However New Line really does seem to be very greedy. You would think there would be more than enough money to go around. Geez who is getting all the profits from the Rings movies?? pure sour grapes for Fox.

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raistlin75 writes:
on Feb 12 2008 08:42 PM

In reply to this comment (#1571127)
"Passion was great IMO. It basically depicted a real event exactly the way it happened - but I will admit Passion is not for everyone."

It's foolish to think a movie made about something that happened in the last decade depicts 'exactly' the way it happened, nevermind a story over 2,000 years old. However, it doesn't matter if it happened or not, the reality is that Gibson chose to focus on the torture aspect of a story where Scorsese chose to make a movie about a human with human flaws.

As for Kathleen Turner's claims, any arrest records for Cage should be easy enough to fact check, maybe it happened and he didn't actually get arrested. She could be intentionally "misremembering"... it is getting her a ton of free publicity for a book that wouldn't normally get a mention. I don't doubt her stories about how badly Burt Reynolds treated her. He's a legendary jerk.

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Captain Piha writes:
on Feb 12 2008 08:50 PM

Fox, they're only suing now coz they've worked out they can make serious cash. Fox wouldn't bother wasting the time it took to email their lawyers if they thought Watchmen was going to be a piece of crap. So they waited...waited...then word spread, then one of them watched 300 and the Dawn of the Dead remake and said "Hey this Zack Snyder's pretty good. Maybe Watchmen won't suck."

As for the Tolkein Trust, they've been too busy living off Dad's book royalties for the last 40 years but now with no one actually reading books these days its taken them six years to work their way through their mountains of cash before their elephant polo teams and Bentley museums needed a bit of upkeep..

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DarthWonka writes:
on Feb 12 2008 09:52 PM

The Passion sucked simply because of its own internal logic. A man taking that much of a beating would have died before he made it to the cross. To which some of you would reply: "But he's Jesus!" To which I reply, "Fine, so why didn't his torturers recognize him as someone above normal and start to say 'Gee, maybe he really is the son of God to be able to take this sort of punishment?'" Just ridiculous.

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musiclc writes:
on Feb 12 2008 11:35 PM

Here's a good commentary about Jesus' crucifixion touching on the Gibson movie: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5348

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Zenrick writes:
on Feb 13 2008 12:27 AM

What's sad is the same people I know that thought The Passion was a torture film loved Hostel. I guess torturing a man who actually tried to do some good is considered kitsch, whereas watching a girl get her eyeball cut off is art.
I guess I'm one of the few that actually noticed there was a point to Jesus' torture in the film. It could have been toned down most definitely, but to say this was purely a torture film either means you never watched it, or you could care less who Jesus is and what He did.

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kiss bang kill writes:
on Feb 13 2008 01:56 AM

In reply to this comment (#1571632)
I love how "He" is capitalized. Oh, you crazy bible thumpers.

I always thought it was funny that someone whom even considered themselves a Christian would flock to see that. I love cinema, and I'm Agnostic, yet I still have my own beliefs...and even I stayed far away from that film. There was no secret as to what kind of film it was going to be...

Its on the same level as people who go see Cloverfield, then later complain and whine about the cinematography. Ridiculous says I.

Lawsuits in general are pretty lame. We are the sue your neighbor generation, and it is becoming a little sick. Pay the people whom deserve to be paid and be done with it already...

though, New Line is greedy as hell.

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faliklunj writes:
on Feb 13 2008 03:32 AM

In reply to this comment (#1570351)
Nic has good reason to be worried about his younger fans: after the howlingly bad actor's last half-dozen films, the under-5s are his only fan base now.

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