As a first step towards understanding the relationship between
foliations and tight contact structures on hyperbolic
3-manifolds, we classify ``extremal'' tight contact structures on
a surface bundle $M$ over the circle with pseudo-Anosov monodromy.
More specifically, there is exactly one tight contact structure (up to
isotopy) whose Euler class, when evaluated on the fiber, equals the Euler
characteristic of the fiber. This rigidity theorem is a consequence of
properties of the action of pseudo-Anosov maps on the complex of
curves of the fiber and a remarkable flexibility property of convex
surfaces in $M$. Indeed, this flexibility can already be seen in
surface bundles over the interval, where an analogous classification
theorem is also established.