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I suspect that Jackson's/New Line's position is that they want access to all Tolkien's M-e writings - not so that they can produce 'faithful' adaptations, but simply so that they can produce anything M-e related that they want to - or to put it another way, they don't want to be restricted in what they produce, story-wise.
My feeling is that they want to be able to produce a series of M-e movies (this applies to New Line in particular - it looks like their latest venture 'The Golden Compass' is on track to lose them money, so another M-e movie may well mean the difference between success & going out of business altogether), because M-e is a money spinner for them, but their motives are purely commercial.
In short, I don't think the studio has any desire to accept any deal that would give the Estate any creative control, let alone final say, & I think the Estate are savvy enough to know that selling the rights without that kind of control being retained will lead to a very slippery slope of a series of increasingly bad sword & sorcery movies at the end of which lies the Saturday morning cartoon 'Adventures of Merry & Pippin' depicting their 'hilarious' adventures in Fangorn taking on Saruman.....
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