It’s hard not to side with Peter Jackson on this.

But today the dispute reached breaking point, with Mr Shaye telling the Sci-Fi Wire: “He’s got a quarter of a billion dollars paid to him so far, justifiably, according to contract, completely right.

“And this guy… turns around without wanting to have a discussion with us and sues us and refused to discuss it unless we just give in to his plan.

“I don’t want to work with that guy any more. Why would I? So the answer is he will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I’m still working at the company.”

A: Mr. Shaye sounds like a complete Type-A asshole. He should have started his quote with WAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa. B: The film has brought in $US4 billion. So Jackson, who made a butt-pile of money, got $250,000,000 which is roughly 6.25% of gross. So Mr. Shaye is being pissy because his company only made 3.75 BILLION dollars on Mr. Jackson’s work. What a fucking asshole.

UPDATE: I just found Jackson’s statement about the above:

“Our issue with New Line Cinema has only ever been about their refusal to account for financial anomalies that surfaced from a partial audit of The Fellowship of the Ring.” The statement continues with Jackson saying, “Contrary to recent comments made by Bob Shaye, we attempted to discuss the issues raised by the Fellowship audit with New Line for over a year but the studio was and continues to be completely uncooperative. This has compelled us to file a lawsuit to pursue our contractual rights under the law. Nobody likes taking legal action, but the studio left us with no alternative.” The statement concludes by saying, “It is regrettable that Bob has chosen to make it personal. I have always had the highest respect and affection for Bob and other senior management at New Line and continue to do so.”