“I do not want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me,” New Line chief Robert Shaye said in January about Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson, even though Jackson sued only with the goal of forcing a third-party audit to determine if New Line had been on the up-and-up regarding Rings revenues.

Asked about this contretemps, director James Cameron has recently told Premiere magazine’s Tom Roston that Shaye’s reluctance to submit to an aduit is “bizarre.”

Cameron adds that 20th Century Fox, with which he’s had a 20-year history, “has always been very transparent financially…it’s almost automatic that you do an audit.” Admitting that he’s speaking out of turn, Cameron intimates to Roston that “the easiest explanation for New Line’s behavior is that it has something to hide.”