"Watchmen" Continues its Voyage into Clusterf*#kery!

Okay, according to an article in the New York Times, the legal battle between 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. over the rights to Watchmen has officially left "embroglio" status and is heading toward "fiasco", with a possible end destination of "clusterfuck".

Fox has filed an injunction to prevent the release of the film, which has forced Warners to respond with something along the lines of: "Hey, pricks, we've been making this thing for over a year! You couldn't have filed suit before we released a trailer and ton of press and spent like $180 million? What a bunch of douchebags. Hey, judge, am I right? Huh, am I?"

Here's a little snippet from the article:

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 Fox has said that agreement was superseded by a later deal, under which Mr.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.

Now, as I've stated previously, if Fox is owed some cash, then they should get it. But this is something that should have been solved waaaaaaay before a frame of film was shot. And, knowing a little about the film biz, I'm positive Warner's would never have entered production without a clear ruling on what it owned and who got a cut of what. Additionally, Fox never would have allowed things to get this far unless it's looking for the largest payout possible (by holding the flick hostage) or it fucked up (which has happened before). Either way, Fox? You suck a little bit.

And the fans are saying they're going to let Fox know it. An article at Entertainment Weekly goes over how a lot of fans are proposing a boycott of Fox's upcoming films until a resolution is reached, notably mentioning X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. We'll see if comic fans' dedication to Alan Moore's masterpiece will trump their seemingly insatiable desire to see Gambit depicted onscreen.