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Judge Rules Fox Has Copyright Claim To Watchmen
fermion writes "According to the NYT, a judge has decided that Fox owns the copyright to Watchmen, not Warner. Is this an example of copyright law becoming so complex that companies can abuse the court system to prevent competition, or just extreme incompetence by Warner? In the current business environment, either explanation is believable. Yet it is unbelievable that seasoned producers would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create a movie that they can't even release. It seems the judge didn't want to bring this to a jury, and maybe daring Warner to appeal, or Fox to settle." The article says that Fox acquired movie rights to the Watchmen story in the late 1980s, but budget disputes and personnel changes have muddied the waters; Wikipedia has a bit more on the "development hell" which has plagued the film project.
I know, like the whole time I was watching it I was like wtf? this isnt at all like the graphic nov@#(&$# Wait. I have not seen it. It has not been released. It may not be released now.
When did Hollywood come up with its own ideas in the past? They were just ripping off fresher ideas (with notable exceptions of course, but the exceptions didn't come from Hollywood, it came from certain individual filmmakers/writers/directors working for Hollywood)
Hypothetical question. If some artsy filmmaker made a low budget Watchmen movie that was really low budget, Im talking about uses visual symbolism instead of special effects, less than half a million budget, etc etc, that was absolutely in keeping with the spirit and meaning of the source work would you go watch it? Would you watch it over a Hollywooded version that was visually cool?