New Lawsuit May Kill ‘The Hobbit’ - Blogging Sundance - Here’s yet another article in the ongoing saga of actually making the Hobbit movie (or movies). For those keeping score, here’s the latest:

According to the Associated Press, this latest suit was filed Monday by The Tolkien Trust, a British charity that manages Tolkien’s estate, and HarperCollins, the publishing company that originally put out the Lord of the Rings books. The main claim is that New Line has failed to pay The Tolkien Trust and other plaintiffs a promised 7.5% of the Lord of the Rings trilogy’s gross receipts.

If I’m reading that right, they are basically saying “Hey wait a minute… you didn’t even pay us for the last movies yet — so fuck yo couch.” If you haven’t been keeping score, we got one sexy message board thread that’s been running for about four years now that I’ve kept annoyingly up to date.

Nevertheless, I thought this would be a great time to remind all you middle-earth geeks that we’re not totally lost without Del Toro or Jackson — The Hobbit stands to be enjoyed right now. For me, this means reading the book every couple of years. I nabbed this lovely hardcover edition at a closing bookstore for an obscene price, and it’s wonderful. I was asked to read the book in school, something like 4th or 7th grade (apparently not uncommon) - so reading it now is a nice nostalgic way to enjoy the richly defined footprint of modern fantasy.

There’s also the existing 1977 Rankin/Bass movie, if you will, of The Hobbit - which you can easily pick up on DVD. Since this is a another nostalgic keepsake from my youth, I don’t know how it might come across on first viewing today; in fact, I first saw this cartoon and it’s sequels before reading the books. For obsessive compulsive enthusiasts, I recommend exploring Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and then the Rankin/Bass adaptation of Return of the King after the Hobbit to round off the 1970’s ‘animated trilogy’.

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