Image caption The second film in the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, is released on Friday 
 
 Bob and Harvey Weinstein are suing Warner Bros over its decision to divide The Hobbit into three films, which will mean they receive no payment from the second and third instalments. 
 
 Miramax, founded by the brothers, sold its rights to The Hobbit to New Line, part of the Warner group, in 1998. 
 
 New Line agreed to make payments for the "first motion picture" only. 
 
 The Weinsteins claim the studio adapted the book into three films "solely to deprive plaintiffs" of agreed revenue. 
 
 "This case is about greed and ingratitude," said the Weinsteins and Miramax, in a complaint filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. 
 
 'Blunder' 
 
 The film producers are suing Time Warner Inc for at least $75m (£45.7m), alleging Warner Bros' decision to create a trilogy of films from JRR Tolkien's standalone novel was a pretext to deprive them of 5% of the gross receipts from the last two films. 
 
 But a spokesman for Warner Bros accused the Weinsteins of "one of the great blunders in movie history". 
 
 "Fifteen years ago Miramax, run by the Weinstein brothers, sold its rights in The Hobbit to New Line. No amount of trying to rewrite history can change that fact," said Paul McGuire. 
 
 Image caption The Desolation of Smaug sees British actor Martin Freeman reprise his role as Bilbo Baggins 
 
 "They agreed to be paid only on the first motion picture based on The Hobbit. And that's all they're owed." 
 
 The second instalment of The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug, directed by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, is due to be released worldwide on Friday. 
 
 Early reviews are promising. "Jackson gets the drama in gear here from the outset with a sense of storytelling that possesses palpable energy and purpose," wrote Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter, adding it was a clear "improvement" on the first instalment, which received a lukewarm response from critics. 
 
 "The Desolation of Smaug is a cheerfully entertaining and exhilarating adventure tale, a supercharged Saturday morning picture," wrote Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian. 
 
 "It never sagged once in its mighty two hour 40 minutes running time and the high-frame-rate projection for this film somehow looks richer and denser than it did the last time round," he wrote. 
 
 Time magazine's Richard Corliss hailed the new film as "livelier, ruder and less slavishly faithful to its source" than its predecessor. 
 
 "Smaug is different: a really good movie, superior to the first in that it brings its characters to rambunctious life..." 
 
 But The Telegraph's Robbie Collin countered: "The tone is 100% Jackson - a kind of thundering gloominess, cut with the occasional glint of Discworld mischief." 
 
 "Maybe this really is what a lot of people want to see from a film version of The Hobbit, but let's at least accept that Tolkien would probably not have been among them." 
 
 The first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, was released in 2012 and grossed more than $1bn (£609m). 

 Bob Weinstein (L) and his brother Harvey Weinstein, the founders of The Weinstein Co., pose at the premiere of the film ''1408'' in Los Angeles, California in this file photo taken June 12, 2007. 
 
 NEW YORK Movie producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein have sued Time Warner Inc for at least $75 million over its decision to divide the screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's book "The Hobbit" into three parts, and refusing to pay them for the second and third films. 
 
 In a complaint filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the Weinstein brothers and Miramax LLC said executives at Warner Brothers and its New Line Cinema unit chose to split "The Hobbit" as a pretext to deprive them of 5 percent of the gross receipts from the last two films. 
 
 The Weinsteins said they had in 1998 sold New Line the movie rights to "The Hobbit" and Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings," after having spent more than $10 million to adapt them. They said New Line had agreed to make payments for the "first motion picture," but not "remakes," based on the books. 
 
 "This case is about greed and ingratitude," said the Weinsteins and Miramax, which the brothers founded. "Warner takes this position solely to deprive plaintiffs of their right to share in the revenues from two of the three filmed installments of 'The Hobbit.'" 
 
 Warner Brothers countered that the Weinsteins simply made a business mistake when they sold the film rights to New Line. 
 
 Paul McGuire, a Warner Brothers spokesman, said the studio filed for arbitration on November 26 with JAMS Inc, a New York firm once known as Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, to resolve the dispute. 
 
 "This is about one of the great blunders in movie history," McGuire said. "Fifteen years ago Miramax, run by the Weinstein brothers, sold its rights in 'The Hobbit' to New Line. No amount of trying to rewrite history can change that fact. They agreed to be paid only on the first motion picture based on 'The Hobbit.' And that's all they're owed." 
 
 Tuesday's lawsuit is the latest litigation involving the Weinsteins, who earlier this year battled with Warner Brothers over the title of one of their films, which was eventually called "Lee Daniels' The Butler." 
 
 The lawsuit over "The Hobbit" was filed three days before the scheduled December 13 worldwide release of director Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," the second of the three planned "Hobbit" films. 
 
 The first film, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," was released in 2012 and grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. 
 
 David Boies and Motty Shulman, who are partners at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, represent Miramax and the Weinsteins. They were not immediately available on Wednesday for comment. 
 
 The case is Miramax LLC et al v. New Line Cinema Corp et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 161383/2013. 
 
 (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Grant McCool)
– If you thought you were annoyed when you heard Warner Bros. was turning a 300-page children's book into three epic movies, well, you're probably not quite as annoyed as the Weinstein brothers. In fact, Bob and Harvey are suing Warner over the decision to make three Hobbit movies, the BBC reports. They sold their Miramax rights to the story to New Line (a Warner company) in 1998, with an agreement that they would be paid for the "first motion picture." Now the Weinsteins say the studio decided to make the story into a trilogy "solely to deprive" them of any money from the second and third installments. They want at least $75 million, claiming that Warner Bros. set out to keep 5% of the gross receipts from films two and three from them. They insist the case "is about greed and ingratitude," but a rep for Warner Bros. has a different take on the situation, per Reuters: "This is about one of the great blunders in movie history. Fifteen years ago Miramax, run by the Weinstein brothers, sold its rights in The Hobbit to New Line. No amount of trying to rewrite history can change that fact." The second installment of the series is out tomorrow.