PETER S. BEAGLE AND THE SAUL ZAENTZ COMPANY
(RE THE ANIMATED LORD OF THE RINGS)

THE FACTS & CHRONOLOGY

Peter's problems with the Saul Zaentz Company over the 1978 animated THE LORD OF THE RINGS go back a long way. All the way to 1977, in fact. But the essence of the dispute is not complicated:

		Saul Zaentz made promises to Peter in order to get Peter to write the film's screenplay without a real contract or appropriate payment.
		Saul Zaentz never made good on any of these promises.
		In the last five years Saul Zaentz has earned at least $200 million dollars that he would not have earned without Peter's hard work, and possibly more.
		Given what's happened, it's time for Saul Zaentz to either (a) live up to his long-ago commitments or (b) deliver a reasonable alternative.

Simple as that.


CHRONOLOGY

1976 — The Saul Zaentz Company acquires most of the marketing and media rights to THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT. A young man named Chris Conkling is hired to write a screenplay adaptation of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, signing a contract guaranteeing him a total fee of around $25,000. It is his first real job in the industry, and something of an eye-opener. Once finished, Chris gets another lesson in the film business when Saul Zaentz tries to get out of paying him the last $10,000 due on Chris's screenwriting contract.

1977 — Chris finally gets his last payment when a lawyer friend of the family writes a stiff letter to Saul Zaentz threatening to sue.

February, 1977 — Bakshi and Zaentz have decided the Conkling script isn't right. Without a viable script the project is stalled, so they go looking for a fix. Because of Peter S. Beagle's fame as a fantasy author and the fact that he is also an experienced screenwriter, they decide to approach him through his film agent, Margaret Field. Eventually Peter meets with Saul Zaentz in his Berkeley, California office. During that meeting Peter agrees to go over the Conkling screenplay and "advise" Zaentz on necessary corrections.

March, 1977 — A simple $5,000 consulting deal is worked out, then confirmed by a one-page letter of agreement. The letter (from Albert M. Bendich to Margaret Field) says "This will confirm that the Saul Zaentz Production Company agrees to employ Peter Beagle as a writer to develop further narrative and rework the characters in the current screenplay based upon THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien, owned by said Zaentz company." This simple deal memo is not counter-signed by Peter. Instead it is signed only by Margaret Field, who did not have power of attorney to bind Peter to a contract. (This signing is something of a mystery. According to Peter, it is the only time Margaret Field ever did that while acting as his agent. Every other deal she ever got for him he signed, not her, and he has no good idea why she treated this one differently. In light of this oddity, however, it is interesting to note that the written task description is not precisely the same as what Peter had verbally agreed to in his original talk with Zaentz.) As specified in the letter, Peter receives the starting payment on the deal: $2,500.

April, 1977 and on — Peter reads the Conkling script. He concludes that it can't be "fixed" and will instead have to be abandoned and replaced by an entirely new adaptation. Carried away by his enthusiasm for the project, he starts writing his own take on certain scenes so he can better explain the issues involved to Zaentz and Bakshi.

Peter tells Zaentz and Bakshi his conclusions. He shares what he has done by way of example. Zaentz responds by telling Peter that there isn't any budget available for a whole new screenplay and asks him to keep writing. Margaret Field enters the picture again, and after several rounds of discussion Zaentz makes clear that he can't pay Peter anything for a new screenplay — but that if Peter will help everybody out by writing one anyway, then Peter will (a) get a guaranteed contract for the second half of the LORD OF THE RINGS project, at more than his usual screenwriting rate, and (b) that Peter will be hired for good money to write other projects for Zaentz in the future. Peter doesn't agree to anything at first, but is eventually persuaded to go along by Margaret Field, who tells him that the next deal with Zaentz will make up for this one.

Peter writes many drafts: eight or nine, all told, under tremendous time pressure because the production is now ON and — even before Peter is finished — Zaentz and Bakshi have scheduled voice recording sessions in London. Peter is brought along with Zaentz and Bakshi to England. He writes on the plane ride there, and also in his London hotel room. There are some script pages which go straight from his typewriter to the recording stage.

After London, however, with the script finished and all the voices in the can, things change. Saul Zaentz ignores all his earlier agreements with Peter. There is no talk of a screenwriting contract for LORD OF THE RINGS PART 2. There is no discussion of any other projects, period.

Peter even has trouble getting the last $2,500 part of his original consulting payment. Like Chris Conkling before him, he finally has to threaten to sue before he is paid.

November, 1978 — J.R.R. TOLKIEN'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS opens in 31 theaters around the country, grossing $626,649 in its opening weekend ($20,214 per screen). Eventually the film goes on to earn a total domestic gross of $30.47 million against an estimated production cost of only $8 million.

1979 — J.R.R. TOLKIEN'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS opens in Germany under the title DER HERR DER RINGE. It eventually earns $3.1 million there. It plays elsewhere in the world as well, doing decent but unspectacular business (in Sweden it earns $1.2 million). While not successful enough for United Artists to agree to finance a sequel, by all industry standards it is successful enough to be in the black.

The film also plays in New Zealand, where it is seen by a teenaged film fan named Peter Jackson. Jackson himself has related the impact of this viewing in many interviews and public appearances. Before a screening of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, as part of a weekend LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY screening hosted by the American Cinematheque, he said: "I discovered the Tolkien books when I was about 17, I actually read THE LORD OF THE RINGS the first time because I'd seen the Ralph Bakshi animated film. That was in 1978. It was a brave and ambitious movie, it had some interesting stuff in it, but it finished the story half-way through, it got a little confusing towards the end. It did inspire me to pick up the book and find out more about this world, the hobbits and the characters." (Click here to hear a live recording of this statement.)

1980 on to today — The animated version of THE LORD OF THE RINGS continues to make money around the world via cable and satellite sales, laserdisc sales, videotape sales, and eventually DVD sales.

1995 — Peter Jackson, now a seasoned filmmaker, looks for a project to work on while his remake of KING KONG is stalled in pre-production. He gets interested in LOTR again and begins searching for the film rights.

January, 1998 — In response to rumors, Peter Jackson posts the following on a web forum called Q&A WITH PETER J: I'm working on an unnamed film for Miramax Films. I've signed a confidentiality agreement which prevents me from discussing it until Miramax decides otherwise. There is obviously speculation about what this project is, but don't bother asking questions about it, because I can't answer them at this time. I will not confirm, or deny, what the movie is. He does go on to say, however, that "It is not produced by Saul Zaentz. I've never met, or spoken to Saul Zaentz." In retrospect we know he was talking about THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and that a deal had been worked out between Miramax and Saul Zaentz allowing the project to go forward.

December, 2001 on through today — After a shift to New Line Cinema from Miramax, Peter Jackson's visionary take on Tolkien is finally released to worldwide acclaim and astonishing business, earning $1.8 billion in worldwide box office and even more than that in eventual video and DVD sales. According to Wikipedia, the total gross earnings of the three films are estimated to be in the region of $6 billion.

As his direct share of this income, Saul Zaentz receives close to $200 million. He also makes that much (or more) through expanded revenues in his Tolkien Enterprises division, which licenses all merchandising, games, etc. related to the Tolkien trilogy except for book sales.

The creative debt owed by Jackson to his original inspiration is abundantly clear and discussed at length by fans around the world. While certainly his own highly original take on Tolkien's story, many scenes and plot points in the Jackson version harken directly back to the animated version rather than Tolkien's books.

February, 2004 — Peter is invited to attend the after-Oscar party for THE RETURN OF THE KING being put on by TheOneRing.net. As part of general prep for interviews and questions, Connor Cochran (Peter's business manager since 2002) looks through Peter's files for his original screenwriting contract on the 1978 animated version. Finding nothing, Connor contacts the Saul Zaentz Company and asks them to check their files.

March, 2004 — Paul Zaentz (nephew of Saul Zaentz) replies, faxing two pages: the February 1977 pitch letter from Margaret Field to the Saul Zaentz Company, and the March 1977 deal memo that was sent back in return and signed by Albert M. Bendich and Margaret Field. Connor is surprised — the deal memo is not a screenwriting contract and in no way reflects the work that Peter actually did for Saul Zaentz. Connor calls Paul Zaentz to raise these issues, and suggests getting together to discuss the problem in person. Paul Zaentz dismisses the idea, saying "Why? We don't owe Peter Beagle anything. That movie never made a profit for us. In fact, we've never made any profit from our Tolkien rights at all."

Neither statement is true, of course.

Connor talks with several different entertainment attorneys about the situation. Some think Peter might have a legal case for additional compensation. Some think he had a case once, but that the statute of limitations ran out long ago. Others think there is no case at all. None agree to take on the matter without advance payment of a retainer that Peter cannot afford.

April-May, 2005 — The increasing cost of taking care of Peter's aging mother has brought Beagle family matters to a point of crisis. Peter must earn more money, and quickly. Because Tolkien and Star Trek fans have shown a lot of interest in Peter during the previous year, thanks to his work on the animated LORD OF THE RINGS and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, Connor decides to see if there is some way to get a releases to publish Peter's Tolkien screenplay and Star Trek teleplay as fundraisers.

Paramount immediately says yes to the Star Trek project, offering access to set photos and official graphics for use in illustration and cover art.

The Saul Zaentz Company, however, is not helpful. First, they ask that Connor fax a formal request to Albert Bendich. Several days later a Zaentz employee calls to say that she is very sorry, and everyone there wishes there was something they could do to help Peter, but the right to reprint the script isn't under the Saul Zaentz Company's control. Peter will have to get permission somewhere else.

When Connor asks who can give that permission, the woman on the phone said it was "complicated" and she couldn't say.

August, 2005 — The news breaks that Saul Zaentz has settled his recent lawsuit against New Line — a settlement that put his own earnings from the Peter Jackson films at nearly $200 million. This news inspires Connor to do more research. He quickly discovers that "Tolkien Enterprises" has had a lock on all Tolkien merchandising since 1977. Their official website says: Tolkien Enterprises, a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, owns certain worldwide exclusive rights to the literary works THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS including the titles, the names of the characters, places, scenes, things and events appearing in the works, and certain short phrases and sayings from the works. We license these for use as trademarks and service marks in connection with various lines of merchandise. The Saul Zaentz Company also owns exclusive rights to certain copyrightable elements of THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT, including, among other things, film and legitimate stage rights.

Clearly, if they license even "certain short phrases and sayings from the work," they can approve publication of Peter's screenplay. (Indeed, in a way they already have. Way back when the animated film was first released, an authorized book was published which told the story of the movie in stills and screenplay excerpts — another use for his words that Peter was never paid for.)

September, 2005 — At Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Peter finally goes public with his grievances over Saul Zaentz's original broken promises and recent poor treatment.

October, 2005 up through today — The Saul Zaentz Company maintains official silence regarding this matter.

April, 2006 — A correction. Up until now this site has identified Paul Zaentz as Saul Zaentz's son, because that's what Connor was told by a Saul Zaentz Company employee over the phone. This was an error. Paul is actually Saul's nephew. He is the son of Bernie Zaentz, Saul's brother. According to the person who offered this correction, Bernie was a "witty, bright, and charming man" who just recently passed away. We offer our condolences to Paul Zaentz for his loss.

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— Connor Cochran, March 2006