Editing The Hobbit (section)

== Gene Deitch's 1967...thing ==
In 1964 one William L. Snyder got the film rights to a up and coming children's book by Dr. Tolkien that was becoming big and so he had veteran cartoonist Gene Dietch put together an animated version. If you've never heard of it, don't be surprised. 

See a common point in contracts for film rights is a Move-It-Or-Lose-It clause, basically the studio has to make a movie before a certain date or the contract expires and they lose the rights. In general this is straightforward and mostly does it's job of getting their asses in gear or terminating bad deals, but occasionally the system can be gamed by [[Rules Lawyer|technically fulfilling the contract by slapping SOMETHING together which was never intended to be released to keep the rights]] either because the Studio can't do it justice at the time or because [[Capitalism|the Film Rights are appreciating in value and they can flog them for a profit to a bigger studio.]]

So they cobbled together a 12 minute long something that's basically a narrated version of one of those 1960s style psychedelic children's books with a vaguely hobbit shaped outline.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBnVL1Y2src For those of a dread fascination].