Warner Bros’ claims against the estate of The Lord Of The Rings author J.R.R Tolkien will live to fight another day. A federal judge today rejected the estate trustees and Fourth Age Ltd’s motion to dismiss WB and the Saul Zaentz Company’s counterclaims in the multimillion-dollar court battle. “Fourth Age’s Motions to Dismiss Amended Counterclaims and Special Motions to Strike Amended Counterclaims are DENIED,” wrote U.S. District Court judge Audrey Collins in a dense 6-page order (read it here). In March, WB and Zaentz fired back at the estate’s November 2012 $80 million copyright and…

Amid continuing reverberations from the mega-failure of The Lone Ranger, it appears clear that the movie has damaged producer Jerry Bruckheimer‘s long and often highly successful relationship with Disney and will lead at minimum to a renegotiation of his rich deal for a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean, if not his eventual exit from the studio.

Oh, come on guys! All filmmakers and producers make bad films once in a while (which I don’t even think The Lone Ranger is).

Yet, at the same time I’m kind of torn, because we don’t need a Pirates 5 anyway. Disney should just cancel that project.…

The Dark Knight trilogy star Christian Bale is speaking for the first time about his potential involvement with the planned Justice League movie, stating he won’t be a part.

“We were incredibly fortunate to get to make three [Batman films],” Bale told Entertainment Weekly when asked if he could slip into the role of Batman once more. “That’s enough. Let’s not get greedy. Chris [Nolan] always said he wanted to make it one film at a time. And we ended up sitting there looking at each other, saying ‘We’re about to make the third.’ We never really knew if we were going to get to be there,…

Jackson and his team are currently finishing the second film, The Desolation of Smaug, as well as the Extended Edition of An Unexpected Journey.

This is presumably because the film had been cut so short and they left so much on the cutting room floor because of the amount of discipline they exercised in editing this film…

Will it enhance the film or just make it feel longer?

Well…

• “You are going to get some serious Dwarvish disrespect of the elves at Rivendell.” – Peter Jackson
• “You are going to get more of Hobbiton. We always wanted to wend our way through Hobbiton,…

Ahem, your attention please. Another franchise is joining the reboot train:

Once known as “Terminator 5” colloquially, Paramount revealed in a press release that the new “Terminator” film will start over in reboot form and relaunch a new trilogy. Rebooting/remaking a film isn’t hard, it’s been done countless times (see the upcoming “RoboCop” or the rather lackluster “Total Recall” for recent examples), but it is harder to pull off in a satisfying and creatively unique manner when you don’t have as much source material to work with. Then again, there are four “Terminator” films of varying…

Following word this week of an official July 3, 2015 release date for 20th Century Fox’s Independence Day 2, director Roland Emmerich has dropped a few hints about what to expect from the much-anticipated sequel.

”Will Smith cannot come back because he’s too expensive,” Emmerich told NY Daily News while promoting his latest, White House Down, “but he’d also be too much of a marquee name. It would be too much.”

I smell a box office bomb in the making… why do they do this? WHY? If you can’t get the band back together, go make something new! Blurgh.

Well, I suppose there is…

In response, a few cable and satellite companies that already carry HBO and ESPN are refusing to authenticate mobile or set-top boxes for streaming. According to the publication, Charter Communications doesn’t authenticate HBO Go for Apple TV, while Dish won’t authenticate ESPN. Other providers like Comcast have similar restrictions for Roku.

One person with knowledge of the situation said, “Affiliates are always initially hesitant about things connected to the TV. They were nervous.”

Placing restrictions on your customers, not meeting their needs, making enemies of them always works…

As the new Superman movie takes flight this weekend, filmmakers are hoping the Man of Steel lands not only in theaters, but also in pulpits.

Warner Bros. Studios is aggressively marketing “Man of Steel” to Christian pastors, inviting them to early screenings, creating Father’s Day discussion guides and producing special film trailers that focus on the faith-friendly angles of the movie.

The movie studio even asked a theologian to provide sermon notes for pastors who want to preach about Superman on Sunday. Titled “Jesus: The Original Superhero,” the notes run nine pages.

Excuse me…

Talking to David Goyer, screenwriter for Man of Steel:

When pushed on the possibility of the Justice League movie following on directly from Man of Steel he elaborated,

It would be disingenuous to say Warner Bros doesn’t hope that this would be the starting point for a shared universe. And Zack has said that Bruce Wayne exists in this universe. It would be a different Bruce Wayne from Chris’ [Nolan] Dark Knight trilogy, and it would be disingenuous to say that Zack and I haven’t had various conversations on set, around ‘what if’ and ‘moving forward’.

That having been said, it’s all…