The New York Times reports that the real reason why Peter Jackson will not be directing The Hobbit or the unnamed Lord of the Rings prequel has nothing to do with the ongoing profits battle between his production company Wingnut Films and New Line Cinema.

According to them, Jackson’s camp have accused the studio of dropping the New Zealand director in ‘a fit of pique’ after he refused to contribute a video salute for thier 40th anniversary celebration next year.

The plot thickens…

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Posted in Movies, The Hobbit / LOTR •

Variety reports that Martin Scorsese is set to develop and direct an adaptation of Eric Jager’s novel The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal and Trial by Combat in Medieval France. The movie however may not be the veteran director’s next project although it’s the first identified under his new Paramount deal.

At the heart of the tale is Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight who returns from combat in Scotland to find his wife, Marguerite, accusing Jacques LeGris, her husband’s old friend and fellow courtier, of brutally raping her. The knight takes his cause before the teenage King Charles VI, the highest judge in France. Amid LeGris’s vociferous claims of innocence and doubts about the now pregnant Marguerite’s charges (and about the paternity of her child), the deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” that leaves her fate, too, in the balance. For if her husband and champion loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser.

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Posted in Movies •