The fight between Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox over the rights to Watchmen continues as the film’s release date, March 6th, looms close. Not wanting to miss the date they’ve spent the past year hyping, Warners has asked the current judge in the case to move up the hearing to as early as Monday.
Warners is particularly desperate because they’ve already lost the first round: on Christmas Eve, a judge declared that Fox has “at the very least” the right to distribute Watchmen.
Fanboys have been crying foul since the lawsuit began, saying it’s a case of sour grapes: Fox didn’t bother telling Warners they owned the rights to Watchmen until after filming was finished and the first trailer had been well-received when it was attached to The Dark Knight this summer.
Fox currently has the upper hand, but the release date could still hold if Warner Bros. hands out a massive settlement (tens of millions of dollars at minimum), which is probably what Fox was gunning for in the first place.
On a lighter note, Warners continues to pour money into Watchmen advertising, which now includes a series of soon-to-debut viral websites. Check out the first one at TheNewFrontiersman.net, the site of a fictional newspaper that appears in the Watchmen graphic novel.
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