The Weinstein Brothers and Warner Bros. are at it again! First they fought over The Butler, and now they’re in a feud over The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
The Weinsteins claim they are owed a portion of the revenue from Desolation of Smaug since their previous studio, Miramax, once controlled the movies rights to the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novels. Last year, the brothers were paid out around $12.5 million (2.5% of first-dollar gross) from the first film in the trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Legal representatives from both sides have been sending nasty letters back and forth arguing their sides of the story. The Weinstein camp claims that they are also entitled to the profits since they provided $10 million in early seed money to allow Jackson to found Weta, the company that produces all of the special effects for the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. On the flipside, Warner Bros. claims the Weinsteins are only entitled to a piece of the first Hobbit, not the subsequent sequels, due to a previous agreement the two parties had.
Earlier this year in an interview with CBS Morning, Weinstein claimed there is a connection between his battle with Warner Bros. over The Butler and The Hobbit. “I was asked by two execs at Warner Bros., which I’m happy to testify to, that if I gave them back the rights to The Hobbit they would drop the claim [about The Butler].”
Warner Bros. says there is no link between the two cases and that Harvey Weinstein is “just a third-party participant.” “This is an issue between New Line and Miramax,” Warner Bros. added.
