Fox is suing Warner Brothers over Watchmen. And now, Peelander-Z!

Ah, that’s better. This sounds sort of like the Tolkien Trust New Line suit, an argument over rights that may or may not have transfered over the years. Apparently, between 1986 and 1990, Fox acquired the movie rights to Watchmen. Since they had no idea what the fuck to do with it, in 1991, they gave some rights to Largo International. Fox still had the exclusive right to control and distribute the flick, but Largo could go ahead and do something with the screenplay. Largo went tits up so the rights were transfered to producer Lawrence Gordon who agreed to buy-out Fox’s distribution rights if he took the project to another studio. Like so many comic book franchises before it, Watchmen got kicked around like the middle step child from Universal to Paramount before finally coming home to Warner Brothers who decided to put the bugger into production.

Fox claims that they have not been paid the buy-out price or any other price and maintain that they still hold the rights necessary to make a Watchmen film. And now I’m confused. Warner Brothers owns DC comics which owns the copyrights to Watchmen. Why they would sell the film rights to anyone else is beyond me. Still, it sounds like a tricky bit of maneuvering that only a lawyer could fully appreciate.

I’d like to see Watchmen. I’d very much like Fox to butt the fuck out. Warner Brothers probably should have hung on to the rights in the first place. It sounds like someone forgot they owed something to someone else somewhere along the way. No word on the actual details of the suit or whether production will stop until it’s all settled.

[Via Hollywood Reporter]

Share This

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Movies, Comic Book Flicks, Dumb Ass. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.