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Summary a la Wiki:

The Tolkien Estate filed a lawsuit against New Line on February 11, 2008, for violating Tolkien's original deal with Saul Zaentz that that they would earn 7.5% of the gross from a film adaptation. The Estate is seeking compensation of $150 million, because they were only paid $62,500 before production of the trilogy began. A court order was also filed as well that would allow the Tolkien Trust to terminate any rights to future films.

This is not looking good it will take forever for the Hobbit to come out

ugh. I was really looking forward to a hobbit movie. Damn you capitalism and your greed,Damn you!

It's not really "greed," at least not in my eyes. If their allegations are true, they were completely f*cked over for a rather large sum of money. I think just about anyone would do the same, if they had the chance or the motivation.

Regarding the ban on future films, that certainly derives from the supposed cheating they suffered, but it also likely has something to do with the whisperings of more than one prequel film to the LotR Trilogy - apocryphal stories, so I've heard, which would (in my opinion) do little besides retarding the series' literary merit further - or, I'd say, any merit the films had entirely.