The Watchmen Deal

Of course you've already heard about this, as I was away when it happened and basically every website in existence carried the story (which is why it took me to now to dig it up), but Watchmen will be released March 6^th, as planned. While neither side is detailing the settlement, Fox apparently relinquished all rights to Warner Bros. for a lump-sum and percentage of the box office.

The fault lay with Watchmen producer, Larry Gordon, who had entered a series of deals with Fox in the 1990s. When Fox decided to sit on Watchmen, Gordon went to Warners, who made the movie for about $130 million. However, Fox still had some rights to the project - and not just according to a judge; Warners admitted being aware of Fox' holdings before moving forward with production.

Fox intends to pursue Gordon for the legal costs of settling this matter, but Fox knew better than to drag this out any longer. Things may have been looking good for them, but if they had delayed the Watchmen release, they would have been huge losers, no matter what - the fanboy backlash would have haunted them forever. Seeing as how Fox is a big player in the superhero movie business, that is the last thing anyone wanted.

While one can take a lot from Watchmen (the original series), this entire thing might never have come up, had the project gone forward as originally pitched. If you wonder why so many of the characters look slightly familiar, it isn't because they were originally developed to satirize or suggest existing characters; Alan Moore pitched the project for characters DC had acquired from recently defunct Charlton Comics but created original characters at the behest of editor, Dick Giordano (because the story would have permanently altered so many, making them useless for future projects). Had Moore pitched Watchmen just a few years later, it may well have been an Elseworlds story featuring characters we're all familiar with today. Interesting, as Watchmen takes place in an alternate timeline - but the Elseworlds concept was not established at the time.

While many consider Watchmen the best contemporary sequential art has to offer, I heartily disagree. While I enjoyed the series/book and enjoy Moore's work in general, I find him overrated. That's nothing against Moore, as he seems (in many ways) to agree. He wants nothing to do with Hollywood in general, so while I've heard only great things about the film and hope it too lives up to the hype, I stand by what I've always said: it's a lot of hype. The best piece of sequential art work came out that same year, though: it is Elektra: Assassin. Miller's groundbreaking The Dark Knight Returns was also released in 1986.

You can learn a lot more about the Watchmen and the project from Diamond.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009