Look on the bright side – at least we’re not getting a Saturday morning cartoon series based on Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings movie.
It appears that what “disowned” means is that Christopher Tolkien isn’t letting Simon Tolkien attend the board meetings of the Tolkien Estate, which controls all the rights to Tolkien’s books except for the cinematic rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Cinematic rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are owned by Tolkien Enterprises (i.e., Saul Zaentz). Christopher also apparently isn’t talking to Simon. None of the news articles online that I’ve checked say anything about disinheriting him (i.e., dropping him from the will). Here’s one article:
You can get a bunch of such articles if you Google on “Christopher Tolkien”, “Peter Jackson”, and “Simon Tolkien”.
Has CT ever said they were bad movies? The only statements I’ve seen are that it would be better for the estate not to be involved with them and that they have brought unwanted attention to the family.
The first part is understandable from the viewpoint of someone whose goal is to preserve JRRT’s literary legacy. Cynics can view this as purely financially motivated, but more charitable observers will allow for the possibility that he acts out of loyalty to his father’s memory and affection for his father’s work. (As others have pointed out, CT is probably not hurting for cash.)
The second part of his statement is obviously true, as is evident from people’s willingness to call him a “wank” and speculate about private matters between him and his son.
It might be interesting to note that a member of the family who actually appeared in the films apparently has not met with any sort of hostility from relatives.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?storyID=3536960&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=general
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/1697884.stm
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?storyID=3536960&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=general
C’mon, disowning someone because they liked a movie? Isn’t that a little over the top?
All right, all he did was shut him out of board meetings, but he does sound a wee bit anal retentive.
I don’t think the movies harmed the books-if anything, they got more people interested in the works of Tolkien-that’s certainly how I got interested!