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It’s now a tale of two letters. One is from producer Larry Gordon to US District Court Judge Feess. The other is an open letter written by producer Lloyd Levin on behalf of the film he has worked on for fifteen years.

By now anyone following this story knows that Fox at one time owned the rights to Watchmen. On December 24, Feess had found that Gordon didn’t secure the rights from Fox for Watchmen. In addition Feess charged that Gordon didn’t answer all the questions in his deposition and as a result would have no standing in the case. Obviously Gordon disagreed with Judge Feess and wrote him a letter telling him so. Feess has refused to read the letter calling it improper communication with the court.

Gordon has testified that he was unaware of a 1991 quitclaim agreement with Fox that guaranteed Fox distribution rights and a share of the profits and reasserts that claim in the letter to Feess. In December Feess had ruled that Watchmen wasn’t under complete control of Gordon because he hadn’t reimbursed Fox for development costs and he had failed to resubmit the project when creative elements changed.

The two sides are scheduled to meet in court today. At stake is the release of the film.

Hit Flix offered producer Lloyd Levin the opportunity to state his case online. He responded with an impassioned account of the long road Watchmen took to the screen.

In his letter titled “Watchmen. A producer’s perspective” Levin talks about what it took to make the film and how he feels about the lawsuit.

Here are some excerpts from Levin’s letter which is online at HitFix.

“The response we got from Fox was a flat “pass.” That’s it. An internal Fox email documents that executives there felt the script was one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years. Conversely, Warner Brothers called us after having read the script and said they were interested in the movie – yes, they were unsure of the screenplay, and had many questions, but wanted to set a meeting to discuss the project, which they promptly did.”

He goes on to praise the commitment Warner Bros. has made to the film when everyone else turned it down.

“Now here’s the part that has to be fully appreciated, if for nothing more than providing insight into producing movies in Hollywood: The Watchmen script was way above the norm in length, near 150 pages, meaning the film could clock in at close to 3 hours, the movie would not only be R rated but a hard R – for graphic violence and explicit sex – would feature no stars, and had a budget north of $100M. We also asked Warner Brothers to support an additional 1 to 1.5 hours of content incurring additional cost that would tie in with the movie but only be featured in DVD iterations of the film. Warners supported the whole package and I cannot begin to emphasize how ballsy and unprecedented a move this was on the part of a major Hollywood studio.

Towards the end of his letter Levin makes a plea for the team that has made Watchmen:

For the sake of the artists involved, for the hundreds of people, executives and filmmakers, actors and crew, who invested their time, their money, and dedicated a good portion of their lives in order to bring this extraordinary project to life, the question of what is right is clear and unambiguous – Fox should stand down with its claim.

You can read the letter in its entirety over at HitFix.

Will either letter have any effect on Fox or the case? No, but it is certainly an insight into the frustration felt by the producers of the film. They spent years devoted to getting the project off the ground and now they’re caught  in legal wrangling over rights to the source material. It’s an issue that should have been settled before the film was made.

Fox and Warner Bros. are likely to battle it all out until Warner Bros. pays Fox off in some way. With the court siding with Fox it seems they have very little choice. They stand to lose much more if the film’s opening is delayed.

What do you think of the ongoing battle for Watchmen? Should Warner Bros. pay off Fox or fight it out in court?