Court sets date for ‘Watchmen’ battle
The battle between Fox and Warner Bros. over the rights to “Watchmen” took a big step toward resolution Tuesday when the federal judge presiding over the dispute set a Jan. 6 trial date for the case.
With a March release date looming, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess said Fox should forgo any attempt to get a preliminary injunction against Warners to stop the release of the film because the issues were far too complex to be resolved on an interim basis, sources said.
Instead, Feess told both sides to start building a factual record and start expedited discovery and depositions immediately.
Fox still could ask Feess to permanently enjoin Warners from releasing the film following the discovery phase.
- from THR
Studio War Involving ‘Watchmen’ Heats Up
The legal brawl over “Watchmen” is about to get rougher.
Lawyers for Warner Brothers, which has already shot a movie of this graphic novel about the seamier side of superhero life, and lawyers for 20th Century Fox, which claims it owns the rights to the material, laid plans for a frenzied fight in a joint report submitted to the federal court here on Friday.
Fox has said it will seek an injunction blocking Warner’s planned release of the film next March. Warner has argued that Fox should not be allowed to stop the movie, after standing by while Warner and its partners on the film, Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures, spent more than $100 million on the production, directed by Zack Snyder (“300”).
In a summary of its position in Friday’s report, Warner said Fox “sat silently” as one of the producers of “Watchmen,” Lawrence Gordon, took the project “to studio after studio with Fox’s express knowledge.”
Fox, which filed a lawsuit in February, has claimed in its own filings that Mr. Gordon did not keep the studio apprised of his plans, as required by a 1994 agreement. That deal granted Mr. Gordon rights to “Watchmen” in “turnaround” — an industry term for arrangements under which producers can move a project from one studio to another under certain conditions.
In Warner’s version of events, Mr. Gordon, who is not named as a defendant in the Fox suit, actually offered the project to Fox in 2005, shortly before bringing it to Warner after years of trying to make the movie with Paramount. “Fox simply rejected it,” Warner said in the Friday filing.
On Friday Warner said Fox had gone so far as to grant it rights to the title “Watchmen,” which Fox had earlier registered with the Motion Picture Association of America.
Fox, moreover, was paid $320,000 by one of Mr. Gordon’s companies for rights to “Watchmen” as early as 1991, Warner lawyers said in the report. Fox has said that agreement was superseded by a later deal, under which Mr. Gordon was supposed to deliver a much larger buyout price that has never been paid.
- from NYtimes
Details on the Watchmen Lawsuit from NY Times
How could this happen? The question springs to mind as 20th Century Fox claims it has the rights to the graphic novel on which Warner Brothers is basing “Watchmen,” its giant superhero movie.
Peer deeper into the murk of Hollywood’s business practices, though, and the question becomes: How could it not?
The film industry was buzzing last week after a federal judge here allowed Fox to proceed with a lawsuit contending that Warner had filmed “Watchmen” without bothering to acquire rights that Fox says it has owned for 22 years. This eagerly anticipated movie is directed by Zack Snyder, of “300” fame, and is based on the illustrated series (republished as a graphic novel) by Alan Moore and David Gibbons.
Warner, of course, begs to differ with Fox. So the studios are squared off for battle. Fox wants an injunction blocking the movie’s planned release on March 6. Warner wants Fox to go away.
Studios have certainly fought like this in the past. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Sony Pictures Entertainment, for instance, swapped lawsuits a decade ago over Sony’s plan to make a series of James Bond films to rival MGM’s. MGM won, more or less, after Sony settled and dropped its films. But Sony soon wound up distributing a Bond movie, the highly successful “Casino Royale,” as it became financially involved with a reorganized MGM.
That battle grew from a decades-old fight between the filmmaker Kevin McClory and the author Ian Fleming over the rights to “Thunderball” (Mr. McClory had contributed to the screenplay).
The Fox-Warner tiff turns on matters potentially more nettlesome to the industry at large. Central to Fox’s complaint is the mysterious matter of what is called turnaround.
On its face, turnaround is a contractual mechanism that allows a studio to release its interest in a dormant film project, while recovering costs, plus interest, from any rival that eventually adopts the project. But turnaround is a stacked deck.
The turnaround clauses in a typical contract are also insurance for studio executives who do not want to be humiliated by a competitor who makes a hit out of their castoffs.
That trick turns on a term of art: “changed elements.” A producer of a movie acquired in turnaround who comes up with a new director, or star, or story line, or even a reduction in budget, must give the original studio another shot at making the movie because of changed elements, even if a new backer has entered the picture.
Thus, “Michael Clayton” was put in turnaround by Castle Rock Entertainment (which, like Warner, belongs to Time Warner). When George Clooney became attached to star in it, however, Castle Rock stood on its right to be involved as a producer of what turned out to be an Oscar-nominated film.
Fox, in its complaint filed in February with the United States District Court for the Central District of California, contended, among other things, that Lawrence Gordon, a producer of “Watchmen,” was given a somewhat unusual perpetual turnaround right under an agreement reached in 1994. Such rights are conventionally given for a finite period, but Mr. Gordon, as a powerful producer who was once a Fox studio chief, may have had an edge.
According to the court filings, Fox had declared its willingness to part with the project under certain terms in 1991. In any case, Fox says, Mr. Gordon was supposed to resubmit “Watchmen” to Fox every time he came up with a changed element.
- from NYTimes
WB, Fox tussle over ‘Watchmen’ rights
“Watchmen” could find itself in court before it arrives at the multiplex.Warner Bros. is scheduled to release Zack Snyder’s big-screen adaptation of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comics series on March 6, but a federal judge in Los Angeles complicated that plan Wednesday when he refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox against Warners over rights to the property.
Judge Gary Allen Fees ruled that Fox has established enough evidence to support its claims that it holds the distribution rights to the film version of the 1980s graphic novel about damaged superheroes.
Asserting what it calls its “long-standing motion picture rights” to “Watchmen,” Fox said Monday that it will ask the court to “enjoin the release of the Warner Brothers film and any related ‘Watchmen’ media that violate our copyright interests in that property.”
- from THR
Kevin Smith has seen Watchmen: “It’s fucking astounding.”
“I saw “Watchmen.” It’s fucking astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off. Remember that feeling of watching “Sin City” on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching “Watchmen.” Even Alan Moore might be surprised at how close the movie is to the book. March can’t come soon enough.” - from Kevin Smith’s Blog
Latest movie news from Comic-Con, Twilight, Tron 2, Watchmen
From NYTimes:
Brad Bird, who directed both “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles” for Pixar Animation Studios, worked for years on his own version of “The Spirit” after leaving the California Institute of the Arts. Mr. Bird has said in the past that he thought the project best suited to hand-drawn animation, an approach very far from the live-action, computer-assisted, star-driven approach taken by Mr. Miller.
Just before the “Spirit” presentation, Universal Pictures warmed up the hall with a glimpse at its “Wolf Man,” a horror spectacular that stars Benicio Del Toro and is set for release next April.
Earlier in the day Zack Snyder, the director who turned Mr. Miller’s “300” into a surprise hit, teased the crowd with a glimpse at his rendering of yet another of the comics world’s sacred texts, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s “Watchmen.” The film is set for release in March by Warner Brothers, in association with Legendary Pictures, the combination behind “The Dark Knight.”
“It’s weird to have, like, a bible for the movie,” said Mr. Snyder, who for more than a year has been treading a fine line between fidelity to the truly dark source material and conventional entertainment value.
Mr. Snyder has repeatedly said he would lean toward a faithful rendering. But he said on Friday that he sometimes fretted about whether remaining true to the Moore-Gibbons vision would drive people to “slit their wrists and call it a day in the theater” when the film was finally released.
Mr. Gibbons, who shared the stage on Friday, said he wished that Mr. Moore — who has stood apart from the project — shared his own joy at seeing the film finally made after several failed attempts.
There was certainly no wrist-slitting here, just rapt attention paid to the extended trailer, with its depiction of dark and damaged superheroes. Mr. Snyder told the crowd to look especially for R-rated touches, which are highly unusual in the generally PG-13 rated superhero genre. There certainly were some, notably in a scene where an outsize blue hero, Dr. Manhattan, sends some fleeing Southeast Asian combatants to a nasty death.
In a fashion note, black T-shirts and bluejeans emerged this week as the definitive comic-book look. Mr. Miller wore them, topped by his usual fedora. Mr. Snyder — who was wry, but a little more prone to ramble on than in the past — did the jeans-and-T thing, too. So did Patrick Wilson, a “Watchmen” star, and Samuel L. Jackson, the villain in “The Spirit,” as did Thomas Tull, chairman of Legendary Pictures, and Alan F. Horn, president of Warner Brothers Entertainment. The two executives, whose companies have much riding on the picture, sat in front-row seats, keeping one eye on the fans, another on their hand-held devices.
Elsewhere at the convention, vampires lurked. In the wake of Thursday’s screamfest reception for Summit Entertainment’s coming “Twilight,” a sad-looking young man passing out leaflets outside the convention center said he represented “Vampires for Equal Rights.” Late that night, HBO got on the bloodsucker bandwagon with a presentation for “True Blood,” its modern-day vampire show, with Anna Paquin. The series is also scheduled to sponsor the annual Saturday-night masquerade, promising still more sunlight-deprived men and women in black.
What passes for big news around here also happened late Thursday, when the Walt Disney Company surprised the crowd with brief scenes from “Tron 2” — or “TR2N,” as the teaser had it. The movie is a much-rumored but hitherto unconfirmed sequel to Disney’s 1982 film “Tron,” about a hacker sucked into the world of computers that, in those days, were almost big enough to have accommodated the star, Jeff Bridges — who also shows up in the new one.
Zack Snyder VS Studio on Watchmen final cut
From Variety:
High above the exhibition hall at Comic-Con, Warners was conducting interviews Thursday for Watchmen in advance of their anticipated Hall H show-and-tell on Friday. Zack Snyder is currently battling with Warners over the ultimate running time of the movie, which is three hours. He’s trying to cut it down, but doesn’t want to lose a character like Hollis, a guy who gets murdered about half way through. “”I’m not ready for that yet. If Dark Knight got two and a half hours, Watchmen should get fifteen minutes more,” he pleads. “I’m trying to be reasonable.” Snyder is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the studio’s commercial demands and the fans who love the comics. A movie has to reach beyond the faithful, remaining accessible to mainstream moviegoers.
Thanks to his success with 300, Snyder was able to sell Warners on a faithful adaptation of the Alan Moore mid-80s classic graphic novel. All the previous adapters changed something fundamental, he points out, like updating it to the war on terror. He sets his in the 80s, cast unknowns, and insisted on an R rating. “I wouldn’t know how to do it otherwise,” he says. “Fans should thank 300 because there’s no way they would let me do it, no way, I’ve taken full advantage.”
But the studio still thinks Watchmen is too “too long, too sexy, and too violent,” says Snyder. For him, “that’s a reason to go. That’s the why. If you take that out you take out the why.” Otherwise it’ll just be another “watered down version of Watchmen, and then you might as well make another superhero movie. There’s a million characters out there you could do instead.”