According to London's Sunday Times, the son of JRR Tolkien will try next week to halt the filming of "The Hobbit" and its sequel.

Christopher Tolkien, 83, is calling for "one last crusade" in a long-running court battle against the producers of "The Lord of the Rings" only weeks before carpenters are due to begin work in New Zealand on the sets for the latest Middle-earth epic.

He claims the Tolkien family is owed $158m by New Line Cinema under a deal for a 7.5% share of profits that was signed in 1969, when his father reluctantly sold film rights to pay a tax bill.

At a hearing on June 6th, Christopher Tolkien will ask a Californian judge to back his claim that he can "terminate" film rights to "The Hobbit." He is said to be furious with the New Line studio, which earned $6 billion from the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's lawyers accuse New Line of "accounting chicanery." Warner Bros, owner of New Line, declined to comment.

his father reluctantly sold film rights to pay a tax bill.

A judge has barred the estate of "Lord of the Rings" author JRR Tolkien from seeking punitive damages against the studio that brought the trilogy to the big screen.

Tolkien's heirs claim New Line Cinema has failed to pay any royalties from the estimated $6 billion they say the movie has grossed worldwide. The lawsuit is seeking more than $150 million in compensatory damages based on breach of contract, fraud and other claims.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones also ruled this week that the estate and Tolkien heirs have established a legal basis for the fraud claim against New Line.

As part of that allegation, the lawsuit claims New Line sent millions of dollars to Time Warner Inc's AOL, improperly claiming they were for advertising expenses. The lawsuit also claims the studio built production offices and facilities in New Zealand and listed them as expenses for the "Lord of the Rings" films, although the heirs claim they are now being used for other New Line projects.

New Line's attorneys successfully argued that Tolkien's heirs had to demonstrate a "public wrong" under New York law ? which governs the contracts ? to claim punitive damages if they win at trial. Jones ruled that the heirs' grievance "is clearly seeking to vindicate private wrongs."

Tolkien signed agreements in 1969 with United Artists governing the movie rights to the "Lord of the Rings" books as well as "The Hobbit." After the author's death, his heirs created The Tolkien Trust, a British charity.

The charity's trustees, which include Tolkien's heirs, joined publisher HarperCollins to sue the studio in February. Besides damages, the lawsuit seeks a court order that would terminate New Line's rights to make a two-film prequel based on "The Hobbit."

Guillermo del Toro has signed on to direct that film and its sequel in New Zealand alongside executive producer Peter Jackson.

New Line now has 10 days to answer the lawsuit. A trial has been scheduled for October 2009.

MTV News spoke to director Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth), who revealed that the two "Hobbit" movies will actually be one long movie broken up into two parts.

"The reality is that we stopped talking about the first movie and the second movie, and we just started talking about the movie - the two episodes, or two parts, as if they were a single piece of narrative," he said of scriptwriting meetings between "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson, his filmmaking team of Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and himself.

The idea is to make "The Hobbit" films feel like a single movie and then have them work perfectly into the first "Lord of the Rings" installment.

"We all agree that if we do our job right, it should all feel like a continuous journey. That's what we're striving for," Del Toro said. "You should see a movie that's five pictures long. If we do our job right, you put in 'The Hobbit' and you wind up watching the entire Pentology!"

To give you a hint regarding which parts of the book will appear in the first "Hobbit" film and which parts will appear in the second, Del Toro revealed where he believes the first prequel will end. "I think Smaug dies in the first movie. So draw your own conclusions."

"Lord of the Rings" star Dominic Monaghan revealed to MTV News that he and some of his fellow Hobbits (Elija Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd) will be returning for "The Hobbit" prequels. "They really want us to come back, and I think there's a really strong chance that we might be back," he said.

Any fan of the JRR Tolkien books knows that Monaghan and friends do not show up in "The Hobbit," which means that new scenes will have to be added to what's already in the book.

"We're not in 'The Hobbit,' no, but I think the idea in [Peter Jackson's, Guillermo Del Toro's and the other producers'] heads is that the trilogy of the 'Lord of the Rings' films was so beloved by the fans that they're really keen to try to say thank you for the support that they gave to the 'Lord of the Rings' movies and possibly bring back some of those characters that they know and love," he explained.

Sounds like a good place to put in the familiar Hobbits would be in the second prequel, which will bridge the two new films with "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.