Watchmen Legal Update

It seems like every other customer who comes in and buys a new copy of Watchmen asks whether the movie will see its scheduled release date this March. If you are not already aware, the Watchmen film is tied up in a legal battle between Warner Bros., the company who produced it, and 20th Century Fox, the company who originally owned the rights to the film. Fox is pursuing an injunction to stop the release of the film because they claim that they alone own the rights to develop and distribute the acclaimed comic property because Warner Bros. did not properly transfer ownership rights. The scheduled court date was on January 20, but in a move that has took the industry by surprises, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess judged that Warner Bros. with Fox should settle outside of court.

The fact that the case is falling in favor of Fox actually really shocked me. I figured that if Fox passed over the rights to Warner Bros.and allowed the film to go through all the phases of production that Fox would no longer own the property. The fact that the company only attempted to stop the film after the trailer was a smash hit, looked to little to late, but apparently not.

Ultimately, Fox is just going to hurt their reputation if they win the injunction. It will probably hurt Warner Bros. more financially, because they were banking on Watchmen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to be their blockbuster hits for 2009. Yet, the trickle down of a lost Watchmen film will also effect everyone from film-goers, to theatre owners, to comic shops like us who ordered Watchmen books to match the demand of fans of the film. Does Fox really want to be responsible for stopping the release of the most anticipated film of 2009?

-Jon