Film Rights to First & Second Age

[Sauron the White]

Where did I say anything about the holder of film rights deserving a veto over publication of THE SIL or anything else?

There is a huge legal difference between a copyright and a legally registered copyright which attaches protections of law and introduces certain legal remedies and penalties. Huge difference.

The facts are undeniable in that JRRT sold the rights to every single word contained in LOTR and HOBBIT in 1969. That includes the Appendicies. Then, later after his death, his heirs exercise their legal rights and cause to be published SIL. Fine. Nobody is disputing their right to do that.

But the problem is that the publication of SIL complicates material contained in it that is already owned for other purposes by UA.

The writer who has sold more books to screen than anyone else today is Stephen King. King does not complicate the arrangement by including the synopsis to his future books as part of his current ones. He does not sell the film rights to THE SHINING with inclusion of Appendicies which outline and describe the content and characters of his next several books.

JRRT did not do this. He sold the film rights to LOTR and H with all its inclusion of other material, Appendicies included. Then his heirs, took the foundation of that material, used additional writings by JRRT, and caused to be published a book length SILMARALLION.

Please answer me this question. If you are UA - or anyone else who holds those rights - what are you now suppose to do with them? You thought you owned something but now find out that it has been materially changed and altered makign it difficult for you to exercise the rights you paid for and were granted.

Again, and this has been ignored, here are your three options and results of exercising those options:

1- they can go ahead and include things from the Appendicies in a film and invent all the dialogue, place designs, character designs, and transitional scenes from scratch.

2- they can utilize the fuller descriptions of these things as found in the published SIL without actually filming the book as a movie in much the same way that Jackson used afew things outside of the actual LOTR.

3- they can film something like SIL using anything they want to use claiming that they owned the story first.

If they do any of these things, here is what can happen with each of those actions.

option 1 - critics here and elsewhere - the Print Purist community or anyone who can read and compare versions, - rip on that approach saying over and over again for years and years and years that the films are not authentic, made too much up out of their own heads, were creatures of invention, are NOT the Middle-Earth of JRRT, show no respect for the actual world of JRRT and Middle-earth and are, in short, a bunch of crap.

option 2 - risk being sued by the Estate

option 3 - risk a stonger chance of lawsuit by the Estate

Please address this very real problem.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

It's not a "very real problem". It's a completely artificial problem created from whole cloth.

There is a huge legal difference between a copyright and a legally registered copyright which attaches protections of law and introduces certain legal remedies and penalties. Huge difference.

No. There isn't. None. The only difference registration makes is that it's much easier to prove that the work in question existed as of that date. Period. The legal remedies and penalties exist notwithstanding as soon as the creative work reaches 'any tangible form.'

This I think is what underlies your argument. You're trying to claim that The Silmarillion somehow came into being post-68 and therefore somehow illegitimately compromised what UA had bought.

The film-rights holders have precisely the same rights they had in 1968. You're trying to argue that the publication of an Official Version might invite invidious comparisons to a made-for-Hollywood Crap Version. Well, it might. Tough.

You thought you owned something but now find out that it has been materially changed and altered makign it difficult for you to exercise the rights you paid for and were granted.

Once again: in selling film rights to LR, Tolkien *in no way whatsoever* compromised his rights to write whatever he bloody well pleased. He could had he chosen to do so have rewritten the end of the Third Age so as to make Sauron a hero fighting Gandalf's evil plot to corner the illicit pipe-weed trade. And UA/Zaentz/New Line would have no- repeat, NO- say in it.

Again- your argument boils down to a claim that since Zaentz has a claim on the Appendix synopsis, he effectively has a right to protect whatever value that claim might have from 'diminishment' by the original author writing futher about his own fictional world! Nonsense.

To adress your three lose-lose-lose propositions- they were *always* lose-lose-lose. Option one is the empty right to invent a bogus non-Tolkien plot, which readers would assail. Quite true. It doesn't become any more bogus than it already was when the Author's canonical account appears.

[Sauron the White]

from WCH

Again- your argument boils down to a claim that since Zaentz has a claim on the Appendix synopsis, he effectively has a right to protect whatever value that claim might have from 'diminishment' by the original author writing futher about his own fictional world! Nonsense.

Why do you, an otherwise intelligent person, persist in deliberately twisting and misstating my words? Where did I say that the author - JRRT - should or could be restrained or stopped from writing about his own fictional world.

Please.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

That's exactly what you're saying. Disguised perhaps by an assertion that it's Christopher as if that made a shred of difference, legally.

You're objecting that Zaentz' rights are somehow 'diminished' because Tolkien-and-his-Estate had the audacity to publish additional material which was referenced in the Appendices. In other words, you're arguing that Zaentz has a 'right' to prevent that diminishment- which leads inevitably to some claim of a veto.

The alternative is equally preposterous- that Zaentz somehow has unfettered rights to the Silmarillion simply because the briefest precis of some of its content appeared in the LR.

Or what alternative remedy for this nonexistent problem have I overlooked?

[Sauron the White]

William .. the use of the strawman does not serve you well. Where in any of my posts on this subject do I state that Christopher should have been stopped, restrained, restricted, or otherwise prohibited from publishing THE SILMARALLION?

In fact, I said the direct opposite. I stated that I was glad he did so.

here it is for your benefit

please understand that I am not finding any fault or error with Christopher putting together the SIL or finding a publisher for it. I am very glad that he did it.

How can you construe that to constitute advocacy of prevention of publishing?

Where did I say that I supported any effort by Saul Zaentz to do the same?

I have stated before and will restate again in slightly different terms so perhaps we can better understand each other.

If lawyers for the Estate were asked to write down the rights regarding the Silmarallion or other material touched upon in the Appendicies, what do you think they would have to say about that?

And now lets put the same shoe on the other foot. If lawyers for Zaentz were asked to do exactly the same thing regarding their rights, what do you think they would have to say about that?

I do not need an answer.

What I would like is an admission that there is a high probability that those two lists would NOT BE THE SAME. I would speculate that the Estate would claim the film rights owned are far more limited than Zaentz would claim. And I speculate that the rights claimed by Zaentz would be much broader than those that would be conceded by the Estate.

Why would this be so? And this directly leads into the discussion here over and over again as to why we - who have no vested financial interest in either one - cannot agree about who owns what and what they can do with it.

The answer is the selling of the rights by JRRT and the eventual publishing of much of that same material by CT years later. Both give the holders a legal claim.

Right now, today even, minds other than ours are trying to comb these materials to see what they will use in two upcoming movies about Middle-earth. And I am willing to speculate that a few years down the road their will be more heated debate about who did what and what rights were violated.

This is not a question of one party having all the rights and the other party having none. Clearly, both parties have rights that can be said to interlock and overlap.
I would think it incumbent on both parties to sit down and attempt some mutual satisfactory understanding of both of their respective set of rights.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

This is not a question of one party having all the rights and the other party having none. Clearly, both parties have rights that can be said to interlock and overlap.
I would think it incumbent on both parties to sit down and attempt some mutual satisfactory understanding of both of their respective set of rights.

Why is it 'incumbent'? As far as I'm aware the only person arguing, or even suggesting, this is yourself.

Are any actual, Primary world, lawyers currently employed to fight this one out? Has anyone, either on Zaentz's or the Tolkien Estate's side even suggested there is any conflict over who has the right to what?

It seems to me that, outside of your own little Secondary world, where this supposed legal battle seems to have taken on the epic dimensions of the Dagor Dagorath, this is pretty much academic, because Zaentz seems totally uninterested in claiming the material.

[Sauron the White]

Given that today was the official announcement of the next two Middle Earth movies, and given that there will be material used in these films that has been and will be debated about, yes, I do think it is incumbent on both parties to work this out in a rational fashion.

Or perhaps one party would much rather simply go ahead and do as they please and the other party will then carp and complain about how they should not have done it. But both parties will stay far away from either a negotiating table or a courtroom so they can both maintain the rightness of thier respective positions. And their respective supporters around the world can continue the same discussions without any resolution.

And both can be comfortable in that knowing that the other side is just as much afraid of a final answer.