Last month (year) we reported that the upcoming Watchmen movie would be one of the most highly anticipated fanboy movies of 2009. Unfortunately recent reports seem to indicate that fanboys will just have to keep … on … antici … pating.
The movie rights to the Alan Moore graphic novel have been in the proverbial “development hell” since the Comic Con crowd first heard whispers of the possibility of a live-action interpretation. It seems the release of the movie – now completely shot and in what folks in the movie biz call “post production” – will be once again postponed over a lawsuit.
A federal judge ruled against Warner Brothers saying that Fox actually owns the rights to the movie. You figure a big company like Warner Bros. would make sure they had all the rights to a story before spending $120 million on making it into a movie.
Warner Bros. claims Fox has no rights to the movie, and they will not push the release date back. But if the WB decides to stick to their guns and not pony up the cheddar to Fox for at least distribution rights, fanboys can expect March to come and go without watching the Watchmen.
So now that the movie that spent all those years in “development hell” is completed, it’s possible it will wait around in “release purgatory” until the studios can figure out who is going to make the money off this thing.
At least we’ll all have time to re-read the book.
Well that sucks. I guess folks will just have to go see The Spirit, which I’ve heard is not good. Has anyone seen it? Good? Bad? Graphic novely?
Even Sammie Jackson couldn’t save that turd from sinking. We ran out after 30 minutes, and we only held out that long to wait for Benji Button to start. Slumdog and Milk wasn’t anywhere to be seen cuz our theaters suxor.
Watchmen will be lame; that book can’t be done right. It could be right as a short series on HBO…Preacher too.
@ sofresh:
Don’t even get me started on Preacher.
Watchmen and Preacher might both just fall in the so-awesome-they-can’t-be-developed-into-movies category
But rumors have re-re-resurfaced about making Preacher an HBO series.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&id=39072
I saw a trailer for the Watchmen! It said 3.6.09 is the release date. On an episode of Attack of the Show this summer I saw a story about the legal battle, but it seems to have been resolved. yeah!
One might think that, chris-os, but latest word is that we’ll find out a verdict in the next few days about whether it will be released, or put on hold. More can be read over at FirstShowing.net.
the lawsuit over Watchmen settled today…it’s on. excitement is still questionable, but having Denny from Gray’s Anatomy in tights helps, holla!
[...] this year I expressed my doubt that the movie based on what most people consider the most awesome graphic novel ever penned and [...]