Will we, or won’t we, get to watch Watchmen any time soon?

05 January 2009

Gerard Wood

If there’s a silver-lining to the dark cloud hanging over the release of Warner Bros.’ highly anticipated Watchmen movie, I’m struggling to see it. For those who missed the news, Judge Gary Allen Feess ruled in late December that 20^th Century Fox has the right to distribute Warner Bros.’ adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel serial. Given that the movie cost upwards of US$120 million to make, it’s no surprise that Warners will appeal the judgement, and there’s nothing more likely to jeopardise a planned March 2009 release than throwing the movie on the mercy of the legal system.

In any case (and if that wasn’t bad enough) Fox is seeking an injunction against a March release of the movie.

I don’t pretend to have studied the Judge’s ruling but from where I’m sitting this sorry affair reads like a classic tale of greed or of legal incompetence. Most likely there’s an equal measure of both.

Anyway, seeing as the silly season has barely passed us by, here’s my attempt to find the silver lining to all of this. When all is said and done, I believe that Fox has done us all a public service by disenchanting anyone still clinging to the delusion that movie studios care about anything other than making bucket-loads of money. Truly we owe Fox a debt of gratitude for waiting until Zack Snyder (300) wrapped production on Watchmen in February last year before pursuing its legal claim to a movie that it not only did not make, but did not want to make. Thank you Fox!

If nothing else, this legal spat emphasises the real nature of the relationship between an audience and the studios: an audience is only important in so far as it buys tickets, and if the studios don’t believe the numbers stack up, they have no sense of commitment to a project or to the audience.

A perfectly reasonable response to that comment of course is that studios invest a lot of money in a movie and they can't keep making movies if they make a loss. But if you consider Walt Disney's recent decision to withdraw from involvement with Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third Narnia movie, because the accountants who actually run the show consider this franchise to be a sinking ship, it’s clear that we’re not even talking about a financial loss. What we’re talking about is how much profit the studios can make. A small profit is simply not enough. Even though there’s been a downward trend from the first Narnia movie to the second, Prince Caspian still earned a very respectable US$200 million profit. How much profit does Disney require in order to fulfil any reasonable commitment to an audience which has quite literally bought into the story?

Anyway, back to Watchmen. If you don't know the background, here's a quick summary. In 1986 producer Larry Gordon acquired the rights for Fox to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ superhero graphic novel serial. The studio toyed with the idea of making the movie but eventually passed on it. Gordon then took the project to a number of studios, including Universal and Paramount, before Warner Bros. decided to pick it up. Fox claims that the Watchmen project was subject to a turnaround deal (actually two turnaround deals), an arrangement in which one studio sells its rights to a project to another studio for the cost of development. Although Fox acknowledges a 1994 turnaround deal, its case really hangs on a 1991 deal with Gordon which Fox claims gives it distribution and sequel rights to the film, as well as a share of the profits if another studio made the film. A changed elements clause in the deal apparently also gave Fox a way back into the project if Gordon changed any of the key creative personnel on the film, and apparently Gordon forgot to mention to Fox that Zack Snyder had joined the production in 2005. Ooops.

In finding that Gordon had failed both to acquire Fox’s remaining interest in Watchmen and honour the changed elements part of the deal, Judge Feess concluded that Warner Bros. had indeed infringed on Fox’s copyright. Not only does Warner Bros. argue that Fox doesn’t own any rights to Watchmen, but even if it did, Fox failed to exercise any of its supposed rights despite ample opportunity to do so. That is, until Warner Bros. had invested more than US$120 million in the project and finished making the movie: “We respectfully but vigorously disagree with the court's ruling and are exploring all of our appellate options. We continue to believe that Fox's claims have no merit and that we will ultimately prevail, whether at trial or in the Court of Appeals.”

So will we get to see the movie any time soon? The short answer is a definite probably. Unless Fox is simply being pig headed or vindictive, it gains nothing by stopping the release of the movie indefinitely, except the growing resentment of the fan base. And Warners has invested too much in the movie not to come to some arrangement with Fox.

Given that Watchmen promises to be one of 2009’s most exciting offerings, let’s hope this is resolved soon.

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