Who’s watching the Watchmen? Maybe no one…
A couple days ago in my posting about Roy Scheider’s death, I brought up the rule of threes, explaining how things in life usually happen in groups of three. Yesterday was the day of Hollywood lawsuits. It started with the Tolkien Estate suing New Line over Lord of the Ring profits. Then The Passion of the Christ co-screenwriter sued Mel Gibson over being mislead into accepting a small payment for his writing services.
And now 20th Century Fox is suing Warner Bros over Watchmen, claiming they have the rights to develop, produce, and distribute a film based on Watchmen. Fox claims that between 1986 and 1990, they acquired all movie rights to the 12-issue DC Comics series. However, the studio gave them up in 1991 with the understanding that it held the exclusive option to distribute the first film based on Watchmen. It should be noted that DC Comics, who published and owns the rights to the Watchmen graphic novel, is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment, which is also the company producing the film.
I’m not a lawyer, and don’t quite understand half of this. But it sounds to me like Fox could do some heavy damage and at least delay the release of the upcoming Zack Snyder adaptation. I have no idea if their case has merit, but I do find it very sleazy that they waited until the film was well into production to file this lawsuit. They could have easily filed such suit while the film was in preproduction.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Sleazy indeed.. let’s do something
February 12th, 2008 at 11:11 am
sounds like more of a “they wont be able to actually make it because we couldn’t” and now they’re still trying to get money off of it because they horribly failed at making the film.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Silly Fox.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
CREAM get the money.
I think it’s more of a “gimme SOMETHING!” thing than anything.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
greed & stupidity go hand in hand. this does seem very sleazy.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
How could Fox say that when WB literally owns DC Comics and their properties?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
No worries, FOX are just jealous they stumbled to get it made, next they will claim they wrote “THRILLER” and sue M.J.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Why wouldn’t you wait to sue? There is no leverage before the movie has been made. They just don’t make the movie and tell you to piss off. So they wait. WB fails to do their due diligence and now they are in quite a predicament. They have too much invested to scrub the project and are forced to deal with fox if in fact the claim is legitimate. Seems like a pretty good strategy. Why would fox show their hand to WB when WB was keen on going all in. The studios are only friends when they are suing their customers. Every other time, it’s just business.