Christopher Tolkien who is the son of J.R.R. Tolkien and who in 1977 published The Silmarillion from his fathers notes following his death has called for “One Last Crusade” as he sets off from his home in England for a date in the courts of California on June 6th in an attempt to stop work going ahead on The Hobbit movies.
Tolkien jr, now 83 years young spent the best part of 4 years working on The Silmarillion after his father died in 1973 and is said by his autobiographer to be “cantankerous” claims The Tolkien Trust charity of which he is a board member is owed in the region of 80 million dollars by New Line Cinema (who else??).
When his father reluctantly sold the movie rights to The Lord of the Rings to pay a tax debt, as a persuasive sweetener to seal the deal it was agreed that the charity would receive a 7.5% share of profits any future movies would make.
He is to ask the judge to terminate the rights to The Hobbit movie because of the breach of contract. Relatives say he is “furious” with New Line Cinema and has always been sceptical of Hollywood. Even now relatives are still unsure whether he has seen any of The Lord Of The Rings movies.
If the judge turns down his request or if Warner Bros fail to step in and settle the debt (the money is to carry out charity work world wide so it would be good press) we can expect Christopher Tolkien to put up an even bigger fight over the proposed second Hobbit movie which is to be based on The Silmarillion, a book he devoted years to and to which he would probably be seen by courts to have a greater say in regarding movie rights.
My guess is a deal will be struck my Warner Bros who have already committed themselves to spending $150 million to the making of the 2 Hobbit movies. Each of The Lord Of The Rings Movies made around $1 billion.
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And where did you find this?
Hi Mayhem
It was a story in The Times newspaper in the UK
and today the same story has broken at “Rope Of Silicon”
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/hobbit_production_runs_into_a_relative_snag
I don’t get it. I thought the 2nd part of the hobbit movie was supposed to cover the period between the end of “The Hobbit” and the beginning of “The Lord of the Rings”. As far as I can see that has almost nothing to do with the Silmarillion.
Nonetheless I would be glad to see parts of the Silmarillion as a movie - for example the Turin Turambar saga or the story of Beren and Luthien.
erm, an autobiography is one you write yourself. (auto=self) So, the correct phrase “is said by his biographer to be “cantankerous” ” unless he said it in his own autobiography.
I agree that the charity thing should be upheld, but I don’t think JRR would want people deprived of the hobbit.
I too am looking forward to the Hobbit movie (though I was utterly against the Lord of the Rings being made into a second movie following that horrible animation). Now that I have seen the movies and own all of them, I am fine with the Hobbit becoming the movie.
But as for the Silmarillion, I would rather C. Tolkien get his way. I am a huge LOTR fan, and own most of the books about the series or that are apart of the series. To me The Silmarillion is the most dear to me, and though the movies were rather excellent, I would rather not take the chance of this fine bit of work to be sullied by minor inconsistencies.
Although The Hobbit was written for the younger market Tolkien let some of his writings which would later become The Silmarillion creep into it’s pages. The sword Glamdring (The sword of Gandalf) found in the trolls lair is said to belong to the King of Gondolin (Turgon) for The Goblin Wars, and at some stage Durin is mentioned. Gandalf’s trouble with The Necromancer of Dol Guldur turns out to be the White Council war with Sauron 77 years before the events of The War of the Ring.