The furore over who exactly owns the rights to film Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen graphic novel is raging on, and raking up the column inches too. Warner Bros., who, in collaboration with Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures, has bankrolled Zack Snyder’s take on the material, is being taken to court by 20th Century Fox who claims that it, not Warner, holds the rights to a Watchmen movie.
The two studios are battling it out. Fox originally wanted Warner’s film to be canned; now, though, the studio seems to be willing to ‘settle’ for a producer’s share of the movie’s profits. Understandably, Warner isn’t happy with this, arguing that Fox ‘sat silently’ as Warner forked out over $100 million on the movie’s production. The trial, though, to determine the outcome, has been put back till next year, which will have a knock-on effect upon the movie, which, although originally slated for a March 2009 release in the US, may not see the light of day till 2010. Possession, as they say, is 9/10ths of the law.
