Fox suing over Watchmen

Warner Brothers just can't get a break when it comes to superhero movies. Oh wait, they did make The Dark Knight which has been moderately successful at the box office. But those other films they're trying to make that focus on a bunch of superheroes teamed together aren't faring so well. Justice League Mortal has been shelved indefinitely, and while it seemed that Watchmen may be the boon WB needs next year, Fox says not so fast. Coming Soon reports that Fox has the copyright and contract rights to the film. Fox wants to prevent Warner Brothers from releasing the film and have brought the lawsuit 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." Fox claims to have acquire the rights to adapt the comics into a film in the late '80s and held onto them until the organization holding the quitclaim disbanded. "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." So what does this mean? Basically, Fox wants a piece of what will inevitably be a rather large financial pie. And if Warner Brothers still wants to release the film, they're going to have to pay up a handsome sum to Fox. But word is that Fox doesn't want to accept any form of money to send them away, and they'd rather kill the film entirely instead of allowing it to be released by a rival studio. Best case scenario? WB pays up, Fox happily accepts and we see the film in March 2009. Worst case? A string of lawsuits and countersuits delay the film indefinitely while everything is sorted out, and we don't see the film March 2009. I love it when Hollywood kills a potential good thing with greed. Fox sues WB over Watchmen