The battle raging between the Weinstein Company and Warner Bros. over Harvey Weinstein’s use of the title “The Butler” for director Lee Daniels’ civil rights drama could really be about Warner trying to get control of another film property — and signs point to the blockbuster “The Hobbit” franchise.
A tense standoff began after the Motion Picture Association of America’s title registry bureau ruled in Warner Bros.’ favor that Weinstein couldn’t use “The Butler” title because it belongs to an obscure short Warner film from 1916.
Weinstein hired legal powerhouse David Boies, who called the Warner Bros. blocking of the title an “antitrust violation,” and alleged that the studio’s “[holding] a major civil rights film hostage to extort unrelated concessions from [Weinstein].” The movie, about Cecil Gaines, who served eight presidents as the White House butler, stars Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker and Cuba Gooding Jr.
Boies told Page Six that Warner Bros. is trying to use the title dispute “as leverage to get the Weinstein Company to give up their investment in an unrelated film,” which he called a “very popular franchise” but declined to name, adding, “They obviously want to put as much pressure on us as they can.”
Hollywood arithmetic would make “The Hobbit” a strong possibility. Harvey and Bob Weinstein had a reported 2.5 percent piece of the more than $1 billion box office from “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” distributed by Warner’s New Line last year, because of a rights deal struck long ago. There’s also a current dispute between Warner and the Weinsteins over what their stake in Peter Jackson’s sequels would be. (UPDATE: Weinstein said on “CBS This Morning” that it is “The Hobbit” that Warner Bros. wants)
Reps for Weinstein and Warner Bros. refused to comment. Meanwhile, Boies told us that Warner Bros. has deemed any title with the word “Butler” unusable, but that the Weinsteins had previously cleared “The White House Butler” and “Lee Daniel’s ‘The Butler.’ ” “They are not going to keep this film from coming out,” Boies asserted. “They’re not going to bury it.”