Movie News
20th Century Fox Lawsuit Puts Watchmen in Jeopardy
Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 12, 2008
Reports have hit the web this morning that 20th Century Fox has initiated a legal battle with Warner Brothers over the rights to develop, produce and distribute a film based on Alan Moore’s graphic novel “Watchmen.”
As you should already know, the production of Watchmen is already well under way for WB, with 300 director Zack Snyder at the helm. But on Friday, that production was put in jeopardy as Fox filed a lawsuit, claiming that it holds the exclusive copyrights and contract rights to “Watchmen”. In the lawsuit, Fox stated that it seeks to “restrain (Warner Bros. Pictures) from taking actions that violate Fox’s copyrights and which stand to forever impair Fox’s rights to control the distribution and development of this unique work.” In other words, they would like production to be stopped.
The Hollywood Reporter has more:
When Largo dismantled, the rights were transferred to producer Lawrence Gordon. Under a “turnaround agreement” between Fox and Gordon, the producer agreed to pay a buy-out price to Fox if he entered into any agreement with another studio or third party to develop or produce “Watchmen,” among other things.
The project apparently bounced around to Universal and Paramount before returning to Warners. Now, Fox claims that neither Gordon nor Warners has paid the buy-out price or advised the studio of any other conditions required under the agreement, including procedures necessary to acquire the rights to “Watchmen” from Fox.
The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages for these transgressions, but my question is more about the timing than anything else. Why would Fox wait until now? Were they not aware that Watchmen was going into production at WB? Had they shown up to Comic-Con last year, they probably would have known that. All joking aside though, this could have some very serious effects on the production. There has been no word at this point from WB on whether or not production will be halted, but we can only assume that they will release a statement soon. We will keep you posted.
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3 Comments
February 12th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
This can’t be happening. If anything, it’s a dick move on their part as an attempt to get WB sunk into the project before putting a stop to it. It’s a good way to leverage payment if their case is solid. WB has too much invested at this point not to pay the piper. If you threaten legal action before a project starts, usually the project just never starts.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It will all work out. Either Warners will pony up some cash or get Fox to go in on it with
them. Multi-studio movies aren’t that rare anymore. If Fox really wanted to shut it down
they would have done this earlier. I think they anticipate a good return on any investment.
Fox just wants what they feel is coming to them….
March 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am
Here’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Fox has done this to others who are not in a financial position to take them on. Cover-to-cover retelling of a story and calling it original. Fox’s own project Journeyman needs a closer look. Accusations re: The Time Traveler’s Wife and Quantum Leap are off the mark. They are not the source. Perhaps a look at a little known self-published work by an obscure author will shed a bit of light. Check out a novel called An Ordinary Hero and see if you agree that the origins of all that televised time travel and child abuse really was the back lot at TCF.