Tolkien Charity Files Suit Against New Line Cinema

For Immediate Release

Tolkien Charity Files Suit Against New Line Cinema after Not Receiving Share of Lord of the Rings Film Revenue

(Los Angeles, CA – Monday February 11, 2008) –The trustees of The Tolkien Trust, a British charity, have filed an action against New Line Cinema for its failure to pay a contractually required gross profit participation in the three films based on the world-famous Lord of the Rings trilogy. The trustees of the estate of JRR Tolkien and HarperCollins Publishers are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The suit was filed today in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles.

The Lord of the Rings films produced by New Line are among the most financially successful films ever created by Hollywood and were released in 2001, 2002 and 2003 respectively. The cumulative worldwide gross receipts exceed $6 billion. Notwithstanding the overwhelming financial success of the films, and the fact that the plaintiffs have a gross participation in each of the films, New Line has failed to pay the plaintiffs any portion of the gross profit participation at all.

The trustees’ UK lawyer, Steven Maier, of Manches LLP, said: “The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court. But in this case, New Line has left them no option at all. New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures. To make matters worse, to date New Line has even prevented the plaintiffs from auditing the last two films of the series. The trustees are very aggrieved by New Line’s arrogance.”

The complaint seeks, among other things, in excess of $150 million in compensatory damages, as well as punitive damages, and a declaration from the Court that the plaintiffs have a right to terminate any further rights New Line may have to the Tolkien works under the agreements, including The Hobbit, due to the serious and material nature of the breach of the agreements.

Bonnie Eskenazi, the trustees’ US counsel who filed the complaint, said, “New Line has brought new meaning to the phrase ‘creative accounting.’ It will certainly be interesting to see New Line explain to a jury how on earth these films could gross literally billions of dollars, and yet someone entitled to a share of gross receipts gets not a single penny paid five years after the last of the three films has been released.”

JRR Tolkien is the world-renowned author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Hobbit.” The Tolkien Trust is a UK registered charity that has made grants to charitable causes all over the world totaling over $8 million in the last five years alone.

US Contacts:

Lonnie Soury
Soury Communications, Inc.
150 W. 25th Street, Suite 403
New York, New York 10001
(212) 414-5857
(917) 519-4521
email: Lsoury@aol.comwww.soury.com

UK Contacts:

Matthew Moth
Madano Partnership
Harling House
47-51 Great Suffolk Street
London

Main 44 (0) 20 7593 4000
Mobile 44 (0) 7770 381 263
Fax 44 (0) 207928 7102
Matthew.Moth@madano.co.uk
Website | www.madano.com