Director Peter Jackson is suing New Line Cinema for a greater share of the licensing profits from the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, in a suit which cites a failure to pay for script and song lyric use in a licensed EA videogame.
The visionary director of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy names the EA videogame as one of the most important of 19 financial quibbles covered by the lawsuit, but doesn"t specify exactly which of EA"s games is the problem. EA has produced several, including games directly based on The Two Towers and Return of the King as well as spin-off RPG The Third Age; however only Vivendi"s Fellowship of the Ring title, based on the books rather than the film, dealt with the first story.
Jackson, along with his partner Fran Walsh and their company Wingnut Films, listed the gaming grievance prominently amongst the various allegations. New Line has declined to discuss them, but Wingnut lawyer Peter Nelson said the company had "attempted to resolve our differences... through the normal auditing process. That has proven unsatisfactory so far."
Jackson is currently working on a remake of King Kong, which Ubisoft has signed on to turn into a videogame.