Off To A Hobbit-Free Workplace

The ring of invisibility has been destroyed, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy concluded. But there's a new chapter ahead for Suzanne Rosencrans, the New Line Cinema, Inc., lawyer who handled the business and legal aspects of the Peter Jackson movies. Rosencrans, 41, spent five of her eight years at New Line working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, an epic legal journey. The quest began with acquiring rights to the story recalls Rosencrans. That alone was a labor-intensive process, given the number of righ

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The ring of invisibility has been destroyed, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy concluded. But there’s a new chapter ahead for Suzanne Rosencrans, the New Line Cinema, Inc., lawyer who handled the business and legal aspects of the Peter Jackson movies. Rosencrans, 41, spent five of her eight years at New Line working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, an epic legal journey. The quest began with acquiring rights to the story recalls Rosencrans. That alone was a labor-intensive process, given the number of rights holders and the fact that some of the agreements dated back to the 1960s and thus did not address contemporary uses. From there, Rosencrans helped New Line accomplish a feat unprecedented in film history: shooting and producing three movies simultaneously. The unusual approach made for mountains of legal issues, from a marathon publicity campaign to novel employment contracts. Then there was Rosencrans’s visit to New Zealand in the early stages of the shooting. Her trip coincided with the worst floods the country had ever experienced and featured such highlights as washed-out roads and stranded cast members. After five years of all-consuming work on the trilogy, Rosencrans felt her work at New Line was complete. “We had sort of conquered the world,” she says. It was time to move on. What next for Rosencrans? She decided to return to the Hobbit-free world of private practice and joined the Santa Monica-based entertainment law firm of Katz, Golden & Sullivan. Having already worked at entertainment firms Hansen, Jacobson, Teller & Hoberman and Loeb & Loeb, Rosencrans knew her way around private practice. And, she says, her in-house experience gave her a valuable, client-side perspective. No magic in that, just years of hard-won experience.

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