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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 3287130" data-attributes="member: 20741">Correct.I have litigated this issue upon behalf of clients, in the film and TV industry and here is how the scam works.(This is a completely separate issue from net vs. gross points, btw).In essence, there is a production company and a distribution company. (Though in reality there may be many sub-distributor companies on a per country/region basis, and the studio may not be an owner in all of them per se, but has an associated corp take a profit participation in the venture. This complicates things a lot and makes access to books much harder to get. When you are dealing with a license heavy property like LotR, it's far murkier).The point shares of director, producers and other talent are in the earnings of the film after recoupment (net) or before recoupment (gross) are in the production company. To minimize this number, studios often sell the product to another corp it owns or has a stake in - and then uses the distributor to make the money.Fox did this with the syndication of the X-Files to screw over David Duchovny, you may recall.If you make the dollar in the production company, it must be shared 100 ways.Instead, you make the dollar in the distribution company, and pass on 35 cents (say) of that to the production company. The other 65 cents vanishes into costs of distribution and "fair profit" for the distributor.And that's how you make hundreds of millions in sales disappear.At its heart, when these methods are used (and they are common enough) this is self-dealing and oppression. It is as simple as that.Now - I have no specific information on this case and I don't know the underlying facts.  I am not saying who is right and who is wrong.However....If Jackson wants to see the books in these other companies and New Line does not want to show them - you don't need to know anything else. You already know who is right and who is wrong and what those books are going to show. Really. It IS that simple. Not a lawyer or accountant in the business who needs to hear more than that.  The rest is accounting details, fights over source documents, motions, refusals and more motions.It is a lengthy battle.</blockquote>

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