It is tempting to define Bob Shaye through the characters he has brought to the screen. The founder and co-chairman of New Line Cinema, which this year celebrates its fortieth anniversary, Shaye has the claws of Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, the hard shell of those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the tenacity of a Hobbit. Fortunately, the 67-year-old Hollywood veteran has yet to acquire the teeth of Austin Powers.

He also appears to be indestructible. Two years ago he was struck down by a form of pneumonia that almost killed him. Now happily returned to full health and welcoming the release of his latest film, The Last Mimzy (reviewed on page 16), he admits that running the successful independent company has its drawbacks. “No job this much fun can be easy,” he says.

Most recently, Shaye has become embroiled in a very public row with the director Peter Jackson, who filed a lawsuit against New Line over profits he believes he is still owed from the Lord of the Rings triology, which grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. In what he later called “a moment of emotion” Shaye told the news service Sci-Fi Wire “I no longer care about Peter Jackson”, adding that hiring the director for the proposed Rings prequel The Hobbit “will never happen during my watch”.

But ask Shaye about this and an icy look crosses his face. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he says quietly, perhaps aware that his temper may have got him into trouble – again. For, while Shaye won’t talk about Jackson, he can’t seem to shut up about other directors. Brett Ratner, who is currently shooting Rush Hour 3 for New Line, has a laissez-faire attitude to going overschedule that turns Shaye purple. “I just want to grab him and shake him!” he says. Then there was his tiff with the late Robert Altman, who refused to cut his 1993 masterpiece Short Cuts. “It was a great movie but it wasn’t worth spending three hours and ten minutes on,” Shaye says. Then when Paul Thomas Anderson similarly declined to shorten Boogie Nights, Shaye opined: “He did what I say a lot of people do – start taking themselves too seriously.”

So is Shaye a frustrated film-maker himself? “I always intended to make movies, and in a way distribution and production of other people’s movies was a means to an end for me,” he admits.

Not that he hasn’t found himself yellling “Action”. When he was 15 he wrote, produced and directed a training film for the employees of his father’s supermarket. Then, after going to law school and seetting up New Line, he made a “proper” movie, the nostalgic high school film Book of Love (1990). And now there’s The Last Mimzy.

Based on a short story, All Mimsy Were the Borogoves – which itself took its title from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky – The Last Mimzyis a curiosity. A family-orientated, eco-friendly sci-fi yarn, “it was one of my favourite stories when I was a kid," says Shaye. “I was a big science fiction geek.”

Speaking like a true producer, Shaye reports that the film came in $5 million under budget and seven days under schedule – although it’s clear he was out to prove more than just efficiency. “I know there were a lot of sceptical people who thought this was some guy’s ego trip,” he says.

While Shaye’s contract with New Line is up next year, he remains optimistic about the company’s future. Most notably there’s the release of The Golden Compass, the first in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materialsseries and starring Nicole Kidman, which, at a cost of $180 million, is the company’s most expensive single film to date. It’s enough to make the miserly producer in him worry. “It’s a big bloody investment,” he shudders.

But then, so was The Lord of the Rings.

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