Or no Hobbits at all...

[Sauron the White]

from Mandos

I expect that this issue will be fiercely litigated by the Tolkien Trust and heirs. I very much hope that we will get to see the rights contract soon (i.e. the one that JRRT signed in '66), as I cannot imagine that he, so jealous of his great creation, would have knowingly transferred creative rights for new story content!

This is speculative of course.... but ... most reports indicate that the second movie could be built around the attack on Saurons fortress in Mirkwood and the efforts of the White Council to displace him. That is a very real thing that JRRT wrote about and something to which the rights were assigned in 1969. Other events were also written about by JRRT although not in a detailed fashion.

question: can the Estate object to anyone using these events and characters that were clearly written about by JRRT and then the producers filling in the spaces and connecting the dots with dialogue of their own? Is that the same as "new story content"?

And is that what this is about aside from the money? The goal of stopping of that second film from even being made. Because that is what some have been saying ever since the suit was announced but have been met with denials and words of calming caution by defenders of the Estate.