Watchmen: Doomed?

Yesterday I was full of excitement and giddiness about Watchmen, having heard Dave Gibbons announce his complete faith in Zack Snyder's awesome-sounding (and, so far, awesome -looking) adaptation.

Now, to burst that bubble of fanboy joy, comes a Variety report that Fox are, despite earlier optimistic reports, still pursuing a copyright claim against Warners in the US courts:

"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.

"When you have copyright infringement, there are some damages you never recover," said a source close to the litigation.

Fox spent more than $1 million developing "Watchmen" but had not previously taken legal action against the project, which had been in development at Paramount several years ago.

If Watchmen were to be killed off now, so close to the finish line, it would be not only a vast disappointment to the millions of fans who have been following development on this movie for close on a decade, but an appalling wate of time and talent expended by the cast and crew. The clips I have seen are as true a representation of Moore and Gibbons's vision as any fan could hope for, and Watchmen showed every sign of being one of the cinematic events of 2009.

Watchmen has already been described as the Citizen Kane of superhero movies. I'm not sure that's true. I think with the compromises that Snyder will have to make to get his vision past nervous studio execs and keen-eyed censors it's more likely to be The Magnificent Ambersons of comic book movies. The eventual Blu-ray disc though, with added 'Black Freighter' and 'Under The Hood' goodness..that is certain to be the Citizen Kane of home cinema.

If Fox do end up suppressing the release of this movie though, it'll become something else. It'll be a Holy Grail to fanboys across the globe as bootleg versions are traded on the Internet and talked about the way people once discussed holy relics. No-one will get paid and it will be one more nail in the coffin of an already threatened creative economy. After all, if you're on The Pirate Bay for one movie, you may as well grab a dozen.

If they strike Watchmen down,  it will become more powerful than they could possibly imagine.

Meanwhile...

Comments

[Pete]

Are the Fox execs mentally ill? Killing a movie is nothing more than sour grapes, maybe Fox just can't attract talent anymore. If "Watchmen" gets killed by the fox lamers then Zack Snyder should put the movie up on the torrent sites as a taunt, that way it'll never die.

[trout]

Every fanboy boycotts all Fox product 'til this is settled.
I'm starting NOW.

Maybe it was just me, but I thought TDK was a two hour anti-Bush polemic.
If Watchmen follows it's own script, it will be so much more damning than that.
Possibly there's more at work here than mere spitefulness.