Producer gets €137m from LOTR franchise

A producer who bought the rights to the Lord of the Rings trilogy almost 30 years ago has made €137m from the franchise despite never having worked on the films, it emerged today.

Saul Zaentz, 84, was awarded the royalties from New Line film studio, according to trade publication Variety.

He purchased the rights to the JRR Tolkien classics in 1976 but recently became embroiled in legal wrangles after claiming his payments had been miscalculated.

Mr Zaentz sued for €16.3m and New Line avoided a jury trial by reaching an out of court settlement, details of which have not been revealed by either party.

He claimed that New Line cheated him out of funds by calculating royalties based on net grosses received from foreign distributors as opposed to gross income.

The royalties were revealed in legal papers.

Mr Zaentz, who produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The English Patient, is believed to hold the record for the most ever earned by a movie producer for a film franchise he did not produce.

Earlier this year, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson sued New Line for allegedly withholding profits from the first in the trilogy.

The lawsuit, filed in a Los Angeles court, seeks unspecified damages from lost revenue in several categories, including video, merchandise and computer games.

The suit could run into millions of dollars given the success of the 2001 blockbuster, JRR Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.