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Old May 5th, 2006, 01:39 AM   #1
merylsilverburg
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Exclamation You Can Help Peter S. Beagle!

Hello everyone,

First off, this is entirely optional so you don't have to do it if you don't want to.

I created this thread to ask members to support fantasy fiction author, Peter S. Beagle, win the fight against two companies: Granada Media, a multibillion dollar media and news conglomerate, and Saul Zaentz Company, a production company whose boss, Saul Zaentz, owns the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit."

Beagle wrote a novel called "The Last Unicorn" which was turned into an animated film. Granada Media is a TV producing company who refuses to pay Beagle his rightly contracted film and merchandise earnings of "The Last Unicorn" based on his novel. According to the contract Beagle is supposed to get an initial fee plus:

- 5% of net profits from all revenues from the film
- 5% of the gross revenues from "The Last Unicorn" merchandise
- $20,000 for any every sequel or remake
- Various fees for any possible television series adaptations or spinoffs (depending on the length of the program and how it is broadcast or distributed)

The contract also states and defines two kinds of sequels: producer-generated sequels to the animated movie, and author-generated sequels to the original novel, with Peter owning all rights - including all film rights - in the latter.

Granada is violating their contract and making bogus claims and excuses to not pay Beagle.

As for the Saul Zaentz Company, Beagle was responsible for all the hard work of writing the screenplay for the animated version of "The Lord of the Rings." Zaentz made Beagle write the screenplay without a real contract or appropriate payment. But because Beagle's screenplay was so good, it inspired Peter Jackson to read Tolkien's books after watching the film and thus create the "Lord of the Rings" live-action trilogy we all know now. And because Saul Zaentz owns Tolkien's rights, he was paid two hundred million dollars out of Jackson's films. Yet, he refuses to pay Beagle for his hard work...he only made promises, but never followed through.

Even though the above incident was somewhat foolish of Beagle to not demand a contract with Zaentz in the beginning, he just lacks that business sense but regardless, it was wrong of Zaentz to take advantage of him like this. And both these disputes have been going on ever since the 1980's!

To make things even worse, Beagle's mom is 100 years old and is facing medical bills because her appointed trustee stole everything she had, leaving her with nothing. So Beagle has been trying to win legal battles for her and he now has nothing.

As you can see, the poor man is in need of help because he has earned almost nothing at all from his work over the years. Even if you go out to stores and try to buy books, DVDs, whatever, it's futile because it all goes to Granada Media and the Saul Zaentz Company.

This is absolutely wrong in general. Even if it weren't Peter S. Beagle in this situation, just imagine such injustice happening to any of your favorite artists, writers, or singers who is being cheated out of their creativity and hard work.

So if you would like to help, please visit You Can Help. All this information was taken from this site and more detailed information can be found there.

Thanks to those who took the time to read this.
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You Can Help

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