WATCHMEN In A Whole Heap Of Legal Woes
I have held off on writing about this as I have been playing catch up since returning from a week away last week, and I have been trying to make sure that we had as much information as possible before I wrote anything about it, but it looks like Warner Bros and Watchmen are heading for a hell of a lot of legal problems.
Back in February I told you about a legal action Fox Studios were pursuing against Warner Bros regarding Watchmen and the rights to make a movie based upon the graphic novel, as these had been held by Fox since 1986 and, as a turnaround agreement between the studio and Producer Lawrence Gordon hadn’t been honoured by the Producer not paying a buy-out price of undertermined amount to Fox they still hold the rights to exclusively distribute the first motion picture based on the property.
This basically means that Warner Bros should have paid a fee to Fox to buy the distribution rights off of them and as they didn’t Fox should be the ones to distribute, and receive earnings from the distribution, of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.
Warner Bros filed a motion to have the case over the rights to produce and distribute the movie dismissed but the Federal judge dealing with the motion has ruled that it holds no ground and the motion to dismiss has now been dismissed so Fox are free to carry on with their legal proceeding to stop the distribution of the movie.
Yeah, you read that right. Fox don’t want a payout. They don’t even want a monster payout. Apparently they want the movie dead and buried, never to see the light of day. Check out this quote from Fox courtesy of Variety:
“Warner Bros.’ production and anticipated release of ‘The Watchmen’ motion picture violates 20th Century Fox’s long-standing motion picture rights in ‘The Watchmen’ property,” Fox said in a statement, though the graphic novel’s title is simply “Watchmen.”
“We will be asking the court to enforce Fox’s copyright interests in ‘The Watchmen’ and enjoin the release of the Warner Bros. film and any related ‘Watchmen’ media that violate our copyright interests in that property.”
Surprisingly, Fox said it would rather see the film killed instead of collecting a percentage of the box office.
Fox want the movie killed rather than getting a percentage of the box office??
Are you freaking kidding me?!?!??!?
I have been trying to stay calm about this, despite my absolute need to see this movie, and now it looks like Fox are trying their damndest to make sure that I not only have to wait longer than March 2009 to see it, I won’t get to see it at all. OK, that’s enough of trying to stay calm.
No chance. Screw you Fox!
Sorry about that. Right, let’s carry on.
I don’t know who is at fault here, and I’ll give you some links in a minute to go and read details from people who understand the legal side of things a lot more than I do at the end of this here post, but the way I see it either Warner Bros didn’t know about the non-payment of the buy-out by Lawrence Gordon or they did and they hoped that nobody would notice.
Afterall, Fox didn’t make any move against Paramount when they were tryng to develop the movie. And they didn’t make any proceedings against Warner Bros. Not until principle photography had wrapped and the movie was heading into post-production. Why not? Did nobody notice over at Fox that Warners were making it? It’s not like it’s been a big secret, now is it?
I accept that Warner Bros have dropped the ball. Either someone in their legal department decided that it was worth the risk of not paying Fox off or completely missed the part in all the contracts that stated that distribution rights lay with Fox. Either way, it shouldn’t have happend and now Warner Bros have to pay Fox off. And it could well be a HUGE amount, which can only be a good thing for Fox surely? Especially if they manage to work in some percentage of the profits of the movie into the deal, so why on Earth would Fox want to kill the movie dead?
Honestly, if they manage to do that, then I might just have to start boycotting 20th Century Fox productions. Which would mean no X-Men Origins: Wolverine for me, but if they stop me from seeing Watchmen then I am going to be joining in with all the other fanboys and girls across the net who start to boycott them.
What a horrible, horrible development for this movie, which was surely shaping up to be the best comic book adaption. Ever.
Hopefully Warner Bros will manage to offer a big enough amount to Fox to stop this legal action and leave the release of the movie unaffected. At least, I hope so.
Click here for a timeline of the events in the case from Deadline Hollywood.
Click here for a very informative couple of posts about the situation over at The Hot Blog.
Click here for the Variety article.
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7 Responses to “WATCHMEN In A Whole Heap Of Legal Woes”
They just want to get some ****ing money, it most likely won’t affect the release at all.
Speaking of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it seems Tom Rothman thinks the movie is too dark and wants it toned so, **** him.
Yeah, I was planning on writing something about that later on. Sounds just a little bit stupid from what I have read! And as for this, I agree that it probably won’t amount to more than just a massive payout as I seriously doubt Fox would invite the negative feedback this would generate for themselves from most of the movie going public!
After all, after the debut teaser trailer it’s not just the fanboys who are interested in this “little” comic book movie anymore, is it?
Wyv, you’re banking on Fox actually modulating their own behaviour based on what the movie going public think. Fox are NOTORIOUS for not giving a shit in the least about the paying public.
Not that I think it WILL happen, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Fox were petty enough to take this as far as they can go to get WATCHMEN delayed or ****ed around with.
They’re money obsessed, just like Grundy said. But I think they’ll be doing a hell of a lot of research and ****ing this around for a considerable amount of time because they’re not going to want to take a (rumoured) $25 million pay off if they can get in on the gross of something that could “break-out” and go “massive”.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say, after one teaser, that this will be the best comic book movie ever! Mind you, everyone liked The Dark Knight, so there’s no accounting for taste. People only seem to like comic book movies when they aren’t at all like the comic books but cling fiercely to stupid comic book logic as and when they need to. Watchmen, in its glory or truncated, will be no different I shouldn’t think.
Fox are bat-shit crazy though. Rothman appears to have a pathological contempt for comic book properties! Very strange.
At least V For Vendetta was okay!
Why’d they let WB go ahead and shoot the damn movie? They’re just looking for a payday without having to go through the trouble of making the movie themselves, those, those…smart bastards!
It’s not as if the production was under the radar eh? What? Fox just one day sat up straight and went “Huh? There’s a WATCHMEN movie in production?”
I just don’t know how a big movie managed to get into production in the first place without rights issues being sewn up completely tight in the first place!
Because it was “ignored” by Warner Bros. Well, that’s what it looks like more and more.
After I first posted this a representative of Fox came forward and went on record as saying that Fox had contacted Warner about the rights issue before the movie went into full production. If that’s the case, and they have the documents to prove it, then this is one almighty screw up by the Warner Bros legal department and it’s going to prove very, very costly for them to get out of it.
Basically, it looks like someone in Warner Bros knew full well about the quitclaim from Fox and instead of paying up the money needed hoped that Fox wouldn’t notice that Warner Bros were making a movie based off of a property that Fox held the rights to.
Not too clever really, eh?
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