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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