Todd’s Movie Blog

So finally after scaring and angering every fan boy in the world, Fox and Warner’s have come to an agreement and The Watchmen is going to make it’s expected release date.  What was most ludicrous to me was when spokesmen for both companies made statements about how the other guy had acted in good faith ans the problems were really nobody’s fault.  See, they’re both good guys who are working together to make the fans happy.   Of course what no one mentions are two glaring facts.  Fact one, Warner’s never checked to make sure they actually had the rights to make the movie (and don’t start talking about how Warner’s owns DC who has the rights to the book, we’re not talking about the book, we’re talking about the movie which is a completely different thing).  They could have avoided this whole thing by making sure they could actually make the movie, gone to Fox and made a deal.  But they didn’t and got called on it by the holder of the movie rights.  Fact two, Fox didn’t come forward when the film was announced, shown they still had the film rights and made a deal.  No what happened was Warner’s tried to do an end run and think no one would notice, and then Fox waited until the movie was ready for release before bringing up a lawsuit to put the most pressure on a rival company.  The real result of this wrangling isn’t that these two film companies came to an understanding and are getting out the film.  No, the real result is that the publicity has made The Watchmen an even more anticipated film as now even non-comic book fans are going to see it, if for nothing else than to see what all of the fuss was about.  The real winners aren’t the fans so much as Fox and Warner’s bottom lines.