MGM has the Hobbit and T4 ??!! WTF

[TrailerCues]

You can not have a Terminator Movie without Arnold involved in some way. If no Arnold then T4 will be just another Robot Movie

 

[The Dark Defender]

It's part of the same world. How the ring found it's way to Bilbo etc. The relationship between Gandalf and Bilbo.

Yup, but it's also a completely different story, not part of the LOTR story.

 

[ToddIsDead]

I have absolutely no interest in the Hobbit, and the only way I'd see T4 is if it were directed by James Cameron or Steven Spielberg, and since that's not going to happen, I don't really care.

 

[The Dark Defender]

I'm confused, I thought Sony absorbed MGM?

MGM is a part of Sony now, but MGM still releases films.

It's sort of like Dimension being a branch of Miramax.

 

[Lord Blackbolt]

who cares what company owns them....I just hope the movies are good. It's about time MGM put out bigger movies...they can't survive on Bond alone

 

[Gamma Ray]

Hopefully T4 will be the end and there's a good resolution.

 

["Iron Man"]

The Hobbit would only work as a film if Jackson, Holm, and McKellan were involved. And that's also the only way I would watch it.


The Terminator 4 COULD be alright, only if they have the war.

 

[matrix_ghost]

Oh, lord, I would be so happy if they actually could get The Hobbit and do it right, with Jackson and Ian McKellan and Ian Holm. It would be so awesome.

Would that be easier if New Line got the rights to it since they did LOTR?

I think X3 definately showed that you can have olders actors play younger versions of themselves. I just make the face look younger and you're set.
the only problem with Ian Holm is his physical state. The dude is pretty old and i dunno if he would be able to do lots of stunts really.

 

[matrix_ghost]

The Hobbit would only work as a film if Jackson, Holm, and McKellan were involved. And that's also the only way I would watch it.


The Terminator 4 COULD be alright, only if they have the war.

If they recast thag guy who played John Conner in T3 , and use a older , grittier actor , then i could see a T4 movie happening.
IN fact come to think of it , i think Daniel Craig with some battle scares and a american accent would pull of a fine John Conner actually.

And IMO if they go with continuity , T4 should be about the war. It's been settled in T3 that the attack was unavoidable and that history just will always repeat itself.
I don't mind a happy ending , but this should the one where all the action takes place.

You can forget about James Cameron ever coming back cause he has said that T2 ended the story. The war was prevented and everyone goes into the dark but uncertain future.

 

[matrix_ghost]

I'm confused, I thought Sony absorbed MGM?

Not entirely.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4448449.stm

MGM will continue to release films already in production, such as Steve Martin's upcoming remake of The Pink Panther, and produce TV shows such as sci-fi hit Stargate SG-1.

But future projects will be co-produced and distributed by Sony, who also take control of the company's vast library of over 4,000 films.

And though Leo the Lion will continue to roar, we will see much less of MGM's famous trademark and its motto, "Ars Gratia Artis" (Art for Art's Sake).

MGM will continue to release films already in production, such as Steve Martin's upcoming remake of The Pink Panther, and produce TV shows such as sci-fi hit Stargate SG-1.

But future projects will be co-produced and distributed by Sony, who also take control of the company's vast library of over 4,000 films.

And though Leo the Lion will continue to roar, we will see much less of MGM's famous trademark and its motto, "Ars Gratia Artis" (Art for Art's Sake).

Also wiki's page on MGM :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM

MGM will continue to produce and fund its own products, most of which will be distributed by the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group through Sony Pictures Entertainment. Current films include Casino Royale (the latest in a long line of James Bond films) and Rocky Balboa, part of the famed 'Rocky' series. MGM has also announced that they will continue to work on sequels for The Pink Panther and The Thomas Crown Affair.

 

[xwolverine2]

You can not have a Terminator Movie without Arnold involved in some way. If no Arnold then T4 will be just another Robot Movie

theres no reason why they would need him in the war setting

 

[matrix_ghost]

Well , what if they showed how they captured the arnie unit that was sent in T2 and T3.
It would be an interesting manner of showing how they did that.

John Conner would mebbe even also deal with father issues , such as Michael Biehn's character being his biological father but Arnie's character came close to being what a real father should be to a son.

And last but not least , what if they used the arnie unit to make a bunch of Arnie soldiers and them attacking Skynet's defence. Sorta like an "Clone Wars situation" where they have thousands of Arnold clones and using them to fight the machines.

 

[Ebil Gig]

MGM should have made The Hobbit like last year so I didn't have to read the effing book for english class

 

[Boom]

MGM should have made The Hobbit like last year so I didn't have to read the effing book for english class

It's a good and easy book .

 

[hippie_hunter]

MGM is a part of Sony now, but MGM still releases films.

It's sort of like Dimension being a branch of Miramax.

Actually since the Weinstein's left Miramax, Dimension Films is now part of the Weinstein Company.

More like Miramax though is still a part of Disney

 

[Ebil Gig]

It's a good and easy book .

I couldn't get to pass the 3rd page in 3 weeks in that book

 

[matrix_ghost]

For those who are complaining about why MGM didn't makw the hobbit and/or are unfamilair with the whole rights issue thingie :

http://derhobbit-film.de/njcom_febr_2004/njcom.htm

New stir in the shire: 'Hobbit' rights fight


By MERISSA MARR
The Associated Press
2/13/04 9:28 AM


The Wall Street Journal

The Hobbits have returned to the Shire, Gandalf has hung up his cloak and the Oscars are looming. But the battle for Middle-earth is far from over.

As "Lord of the Rings" fans come to terms with the end of the movie trilogy, many are holding out hope that director Peter Jackson will return to the J.R.R. Tolkien classics and make a film based on the first book, "The Hobbit." They may be in luck -- Mr. Jackson and key cast members recently have made noises that they want to take on the cult novel.

But Time Warner Inc.'s New Line Cinema -- the studio behind the "Rings" -- is facing a potential battle to get "The Hobbit" to the big screen.

Under a series of complicated deals made over the past 30 years, New Line has the rights to make "The Hobbit," but a competitor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., controls the rights to distribute the movie in most major markets. No studio would make a movie of this scale without at least some of the distribution rights, so New Line's only option is to haggle with MGM. Unsurprisingly, MGM -- which these day makes few big-budget movies -- is rubbing its hands with glee.

For New Line, it may be worth the battle. The first three films have reaped almost $3 billion around the world, dropping an estimated $1 billion to the studio's bottom line. "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" also received 11 Oscar nominations this year, including best picture and best director.

But if history is any indication, "The Hobbit" could have some ways to go. A string of high-profile films have stumbled over rights' snafus, and "Lord of the Rings" itself took many years to reach the movie theaters. Mr. Tolkien, an Oxford professor who dreamed up the idea of the hobbits while marking exam papers, sold the rights to his Middle-earth tales, including "The Hobbit," to MGM's United Artists in 1969 for an estimated $10,000 to pay off a tax bill. MGM subsequently sold most of the film rights to Hollywood producer Saul Zaentz, who made an often-derided animated "Lord of the Rings" in 1978.

After a series of twists and turns that included settling a lawsuit with United Artists, Mr. Zaentz eventually sold the rights to New Line after approving a treatment put forward by Mr. Jackson. However, MGM retained the distribution rights for "The Hobbit." It's unclear what rights Mr. Zaentz has going forward; he declined to discuss the matter.

MGM is no "shireling" when it comes to negotiating such deals. Owning one of the biggest film libraries in Hollywood, MGM often has found itself at the center of disputes over movie rights, including an eight-year legal battle over "Spider-Man," which it eventually settled. This time, the rights to "The Hobbit" present a potential gold mine at a moment when the studio may be looking for a merger partner.

For its part, New Line says it will pursue a deal on "The Hobbit" only if Mr. Jackson takes on the project. The 42-year-old director invested seven years of his life making the "Rings" trilogy, shooting the three installments back-to-back.

"A big reason for the franchise's success has been Peter. ... He's so passionate about the subject and we feel very loyal to him," said New Line co-Chairman Bob Shaye.

With his long curly hair and casual attire, Mr. Jackson often jokes that his time on the "Rings" has turned him into a hobbit. But he is moving on to new projects this year, starting this summer with "King Kong" for Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Pictures. The New Zealand-born director could take on "The Hobbit" near the end of 2005. If that were the case, New Line would need to sort out the rights issue soon.

"I am certainly interested in making 'The Hobbit,"' says Mr. Jackson, wearing his now-trademark knee-length shorts in a swanky Hollywood restaurant. "I definitely wouldn't want to see anyone else do it."

Ian McKellen, the 64-year-old British actor who plays Gandalf, is also eager to return to his wizard's hat and gray beard. Aside from Gandalf, there are only two key characters from the "Rings" that are also central to "The Hobbit": the hobbit-turned-bad-guy Gollum (played by Andy Serkis) and Frodo's elderly cousin Bilbo Baggins, who has a small role in the "Fellowship of the Ring," played by Ian Holm, as an 111-year-old hobbit. Frodo himself doesn't figure into the story.

If book sales are anything to go by, there's certainly appetite for another film. Tolkien's American publisher, Houghton Mifflin, says 24 million copies of the "Rings" and "The Hobbit" were sold in 2001 and 2002 in the U.S. alone. Fans have since been digging deeper into the Tolkien trove, with sales of his less-popular Middle-earth tale, "Silmarillion," climbing in the past year -- a sure sign that fans are far from sated.

"Mr. Jackson's films have led a Tolkien resurgence among Americans and now they want more," says Clay Harper, Houghton Mifflin's Tolkien projects director.

New Line and MGM have yet to sit down to seriously discuss "The Hobbit." When they do make it to the negotiating table, it is likely that MGM will want to retain some sort of cut. A possible proposal could include the two sharing the costs and splitting the profit, with New Line taking the domestic distribution rights and MGM taking the international rights. Such a split isn't unusual -- in the case of the "Rings," New Line used independent distributors for the international release. "We're open to any discussions that the other rights holders would like to have," says MGM Vice Chairman Chris McGurk.

If New Line can't do a deal with MGM, it says it may go back to the drawing board and either pursue its own prequel filling in the period between "The Hobbit" and the first "Rings" book, or a sequel that follows on from "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." However, that option faces a number of potential complications, including the Tolkien family. While the family still benefits from sales of the books, they signed away their say on any films based on the "Lord of the Rings" or "The Hobbit" when J.R.R. Tolkien sold the rights to MGM. But a new prequel or sequel could be another matter.

Starting from scratch with a new story also would involve extending Tolkien's fantasy world without the Tolkien vision, and his fans may object. "To take some elves and short guys with furry feet and invent new challenges for them that aren't in the source material ... would be a betrayal of Tolkien and Mr. Jackson's achievements," says Houghton Mifflin's Mr. Harper.

 

[Ebil Gig]

Curse you Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

 

[matrix_ghost]

And this might prove to be a problem is New Line wants to make a hobbit movie with Pete Jackson :
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/b...6f91a8555&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The Lawsuit of the Rings


By ROSS JOHNSON
Published: June 27, 2005
Editors' Note Appended

What if Frodo Baggins, instead of confronting the evil empire in "The Lord of the Rings," just got himself a lawyer and sued?

The real-life corollary is going on now in Hollywood where Peter Jackson, one of the film industry's most powerful and popular directors, is suing New Line Cinema, the subsidiary of Time Warner that financed and distributed his Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.

The suit does not specify a damage award. But in an interview last week, his lawyers said that, after New Line applied its contract interpretation from "Fellowship" to the other two movies, Mr. Jackson was underpaid by as much as $100 million for the trilogy.

Lawsuits in Hollywood are as common as hobbits in Middle Earth. What makes Mr. Jackson's suit draw such widespread interest here, other than his clout in the industry and the amount at stake, is one specific allegation about New Line's behavior. The suit charges that the company used pre-emptive bidding (meaning a process closed to external parties) rather than open bidding for subsidiary rights to such things as "Lord of the Rings" books, DVD's and merchandise. Therefore, New Line received far less than market value for these rights, the suit says.

Most of those rights went to other companies in the New Line family or under the Time Warner corporate umbrella, like Warner Brothers International, Warner Records and Warner Books. So while the deals would not hurt Time Warner's bottom line, they would lower the overall gross revenues related to the film, which is the figure Mr. Jackson's percentage is based on.

According to people on both sides of Mr. Jackson's lawsuit, the claim strikes at the heart of the modern vertically integrated media company. One of the apparent - though largely unproven - benefits of media integration is the ability of conglomerates like the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, the News Corporation, Viacom, Sony and General Electric to sell subsidiary rights to the many divisions within the company.

By painting this corporate synergy as "self-dealing," Mr. Jackson's lawsuit and similar suits filed in the last few years, called vertical integration lawsuits, argue that the idea of the media conglomerate is at odds with the interests of the creative minds behind the content.

If that idea was not enough to make studio heads very nervous, Mr. Jackson's status in the business could encourage other directors and stars who take a percentage of gross revenues to look more carefully at the accounting on their films. And because deals between corporate siblings are approved at the highest levels, vertical integration lawsuits often focus on senior division executives and their sales chiefs..

Since no studio head or corporate executive wants to be subpoenaed in a lawsuit over accounting, vertical integration lawsuits are almost always settled before reaching open court.

Citing corporate policy, Richard Socarides, a New Line spokesman, declined to comment on details of the litigation, but released a statement that said, "We don't agree with plaintiff's claims, and will defend ourselves vigorously." A litigator for New Line, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is working on this lawsuit, said the money paid to Mr. Jackson so far is in line with the contract he signed.

"Peter Jackson is an incredible filmmaker who did the impossible on 'Lord of the Rings,' " this lawyer said. "But there's a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."

Mr. Jackson's suit was filed on Feb. 28. In an April 29 court filing, New Line categorically denied all of his claims. Currently, both sides are sending out deposition notices, and Mr. Jackson's lawyers are preparing discovery demands allowing them to see detailed financial statements of New Line and its corporate sibling, Warner Brothers.

According to Peter Hoffman, a tax lawyer for leading Hollywood producers in the 1980's and a former chief executive of Carolco Pictures, all the legal saber rattling around claims of self-dealing and pre-emptive bidding could be avoided if studios turned the clock back and compensated stars based on net profits, not gross revenues.

"Once upon a time, Hollywood studios paid a lot of money to net profit participants, and it was a fair deal," said Mr. Hoffman, who is known in Hollywood for his knowledge of arcane deal making. "Then the studios got greedy and stopped paying, and now we have gross players who used to be net players fighting over vertical integration. The studios brought this problem on themselves."


Time Warner does not break out the revenue of feature films from total entertainment revenue in its statements, and a spokesman for New Line declined to comment on financial numbers. Mr. Jackson, who is directing a remake of "King Kong" for Universal Pictures with a budget of $150 million that includes a $20 million advance to Mr. Jackson to be applied against his share of gross revenue, was also not available for comment.

John Schulman, who since 1984 has been general counsel at Warner Brothers Entertainment, the sublicensee of many of the rights of the "Rings" film trilogy, said that the studio has never used self-dealing to cheat profit participants, and always sets any pre-emptive bid at market rates. "We value our relationship with talent, and it is in our interest to maximize profits to our participants."

The "Rings" film trilogy, produced for an aggregate $281 million, has made more than $4 billion in retail sales from worldwide film exhibition, home video, soundtracks, merchandise and television showings, and cleared more than $1 billion for New Line after payments to profit participants, according to one of Mr. Jackson's lawyers, Peter Nelson.

Thanks to escalators in the contract Mr. Jackson signed to serve as director, co-writer and co-producer of the trilogy, he reportedly receives about 20 percent of the gross revenue realized by New Line for the trilogy, minus expenses such as taxes.

Mr. Nelson declined to confirm the terms of the deal he negotiated for his client, but did state that Mr. Jackson had received almost $200 million to date from New Line for the trilogy.

One thing is certain: if it were not for Stanton Stein of the Santa Monica firm of Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan, life would be much easier for studio accountants.

Mr. Stein, the litigation lawyer who filed Mr. Jackson's suit against New Line, first brought a vertical integration action for the producers of the "Home Improvement" television series against Disney in 1997.

Mr. Stein, known as Larry, would later file similar suits against the Fox Television, a division of the News Corporation, for the producers of the show "Cops," and for Alan Alda and David Duchovny, the stars of the shows "M.A.S.H." and "The X-Files."

Mr. Stein's legal strategy in these lawsuits was to use a "top down" theory of insider conspiracy. According to Mr. Stein, there was only one place to point the finger of blame. "The foot soldiers inside a studio can't do this self-dealing," he said, "without the people at the top knowing what's going on."

Mr. Stein has sought to depose the News Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch, in all of his vertical integration lawsuits against Fox. All the suits, as well as the "Home Improvement" suit, were settled before Mr. Stein could depose a company chairman or chief executive.

"It's true I don't do trials, because if you have a good lawyer, you don't have to go to trial," Mr. Stein said. "A lot of attorneys think what I do on vertical integration litigation is easy, and they take a run at it. But if you don't know a hell of a lot about studio accounting and intellectual property law, it's amateur hour."

In the "Rings" matter, home video, television and merchandising were handled by divisions of New Line, except for certain foreign rights, which were handled by Warner Brothers. Soundtrack sales were handled by Warner Records, a Time Warner subsidiary that was recently sold to an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman.

But Mr. Socarides said some lucrative rights did not go to Time Warner companies. The pay television deal went to Starz, not Time Warner's HBO. He added that the "Rings" book trilogy remains with Houghton Mifflin, which is not a Time Warner subsidiary (although editions related to the films were released by Warner Books).

To defend itself, New Line has hired Robert Schwartz, the head of entertainment litigation at O'Melveny & Myers, who has gone against Mr. Stein in many profit participation cases.

Mr. Schwartz declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Jackson's claims, except to say that he is accustomed to dealing with litigants "who say they're not going to settle for anything less than 100 cents on every dollar in dispute." He added that "in my experience, these are the guys who in the end walk away with a nickel on every dollar."






When told of Mr. Schwartz's comment, Mr. Nelson replied, "I'm confident that after we see all the financial records from New Line and Warner Brothers that we're trying to get to, every dollar in dispute will become four dollars."



Integrating One Film Trilogy With Many Subsidiaries Editors' Note Monday, Aug. 1, 2005

An article in Business Day on June 27 headlined "Lawsuit of the Rings" described a court action by Peter Jackson, director of "The Fellowship of the Ring," contending that New Line Cinema, a unit of Time Warner, had committed fraud in handling the film's subsidiary rights. The article included a quotation attributed to a lawyer for New Line, said to be involved in the suit but not further identified, contending that Mr. Jackson had already received an enormous amount of money from the company and asserting, "There's a certain piggishness involved here."

The Times's policy does not permit the granting of anonymity to confidential news sources "as cover for a personal or partisan attack." In fairness the quotation should not have appeared.

The article also referred incompletely to an assertion of "self-dealing," the sale of subsidiary rights to other companies under the Time Warner umbrella, and to the way it could affect the film's gross revenues, upon which Mr. Jackson's percentage is based. The possibility that such deals lowered the gross revenues is an allegation in the lawsuit, not an established fact.

The article also omitted context for a comment by Robert Schwartz, an entertainment lawyer hired by New Line, that litigants are willing to settle for far less than what they initially claim. He says he was speaking in general about such lawsuits, not specifically about the parties in Mr. Jackson's suit.

The article and a related chart misstated the role of Warner Books in the distribution of subsidiary rights for the "Lord of the Rings" films. Warner Books did not receive such rights. The chart referred incorrectly to rights for foreign theatrical exhibition, home video and television markets sold to Warner Brothers International. New Line sold Warner Brothers International less than 30 percent of such rights, not a majority. The article also misstated the name of the music division of Time Warner that had the rights to the film's soundtrack. It was Warner Brothers Records (now the Warner Music Group), not Warner Records.

 

[TheVileOne]

I have little faith in MGM managing or producing The Hobbit or anything LOTR related.

Also, most of those movies sound like crap. The Pink Panther remake was garbage. T3 was pointless. I see no point in a sequel to the remake of the Thomas Crowne Affair either. And that movie came out years ago. No one is going to care about a sequel. Just like the Zorro sequel came way too late.

 

[kaylee]

Not really, PJ and NL aren't exactly the best of terms after LOTR, they had an issue over him not getting the amount of money he was supposed to from it.

Oh, I had no idea. Hmm, go MGM then, I guess? I want whatever outcome is easier to get Jackson, McKellan and Holm back because I think that's really the only chance to actually make a good movie of it.

 

[The Phantom]

They should start off T4 where T3 left off and have John, Kate, and the T-850 somehow get transported to the future, near the end of the war, where John meets Reese. The humans and Skynet are at a standstill and basically the major bulk of the movie is John becoming the leader he was destined to be and turning the tides of war. The T-850 will have a clone nemesis that he fights at numerous points in the movie. In the end Skynet should be all but defeated and their last ditch effort is to transport the evil T-850 back in time. The T-850's have their climactic battle as the evil one makes an attempt to go back in time. Unfortunately the good T-850 loses and the evil one jumps back in time to kill John's mother. Even though the humans win the war, the evil T-850 has escaped, and Reese volunteers to be sent back in time after him.

Thus we get a satisfactory end and at the same time it connects the movie to the original Terminator.

 

[xwolverine2]

maybe they will get lazy and just combine the hobbit with T4....

two hobbits travel to skynet

 

[XwolverineX]

T4 would only further butcher the once great series.

 

[ToddIsDead]

They should start off T4 where T3 left off and have John, Kate, and the T-850 somehow get transported to the future, near the end of the war, where John meets Reese. The humans and Skynet are at a standstill and basically the major bulk of the movie is John becoming the leader he was destined to be and turning the tides of war. The T-850 will have a clone nemesis that he fights at numerous points in the movie. In the end Skynet should be all but defeated and their last ditch effort is to transport the evil T-850 back in time. The T-850's have their climactic battle as the evil one makes an attempt to go back in time. Unfortunately the good T-850 loses and the evil one jumps back in time to kill John's mother. Even though the humans win the war, the evil T-850 has escaped, and Reese volunteers to be sent back in time after him.

Thus we get a satisfactory end and at the same time it connects the movie to the original Terminator.

I really think the only way to go with T4 is to have it take place in 2029 and have old John and Reese as the main characters. It would have the resistance hunting down all of the Terminator manufacturing warehouses, and the time-displacement equipment. There should be flashbacks to the beginning of the war and the time that John and Kyle spent in the concentration camps, or it could start in the camps and be about the revolution. It would end with the first T-800 and Kyle being sent back to May 12th, 1984.