Management vs. Talent

peterjackson
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

It sure is hard to feel sorry for multigazillionaires.

Peter Jackson is suing New Line Cinema because he feels he got screwed in the millions upon millions of dollars he made on "Lord of the Rings."

And I must say, the man's got a point.

New Line, part of the TimeWarner conglomerate, sold the rights to publishing, merchandising, and all those other movie-related revenue streams to subsidiaries at cut-rate prices. So TimeWarner's bottom line didn't suffer while the overall gross of the film (what Pete's salary is based on) went down.

Ah, creative accounting in a deregulated media age.

One legal representative from New Line said, "...there's a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."

Hold on a sec. Is that a massive corporation implying that an individual is greedy? Hobbit, please...