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While the recent lawsuit by the family members of J.R.R. Tolkien's estate of $150 million is significant, it will pale in comparison to the possibility of having the rights to the "Hobbit" stripped from the grasp of New Line Cinema. Those are the stakes of the latest lawsuit against New Line for "breach of contract" and "fraud."

Steven Maier, the trustees' lawyer, said in the statement, "New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures."

Including DVD and box-office sales, the combined trilogy has brought in somewhere around $6 billion, with each bringing in about $3 billion.

The Tolkien family claims they are owed 7.5 percent of all gross receipts from the movies.

Just last December New Line had to settle a lawsuit from Peter Jackson which alleged the studio also owed him a lot more than they paid. After the settlement Jackson made a deal to produce the two new films based on "The Hobbit."

The major story to me is the Tolkien family seeking to terminate New Line's rights to the franchise. If that were awarded by the courts, it would be a major blow to New Line, and would probably put off the project indefinitely.

Of course it could also end up opening the door for another studio to bid for the rights, which are pretty much guaranteed to be a huge box office and financial success.

While fans pretty much insist upon the involvement of Peter Jackson in the project, they don't care whether the studio behind it is New Line or not.

Assuming the courts were to award the Tolkien family with cutting off rights from New Line, it would definitely cause a delay, and possibly put things off for an extra year or so.

It's also possible the Tolkien family may choose to sit on their rights until they are paid what they are owed by New Line. If that were the case, this could go on for several years. In the end the fans will be the big losers there.

For New Line, they're rapidly developing a poor reputation in the industry. The lawsuit by Peter Jackson was in relationship to opening up the books so he could see how they were doing their accounting, now the Tolkien family is asserting there's some funny accounting going on in relationship to them as well.

If the lawsuit goes forward, everything will probably have to be put on hold for the project until it's resolved. Nobody will start filming or pre-production if the rights could be suddenly yanked out from under them.