The battle over the fate of Watchmen took an intriguing turn Thursday when Lloyd Levin, a producer on the hotly anticipated movie, posted an open letter online about the ongoing legal battle over the distribution rights to the graphic novel. In his candid post, Levin gave Fox a tongue-lashing for taking the matter to court — especially since Fox gave the script a "flat pass" in 2005 because "executives there felt it was one of the most unintelligible pieces of s— they had read in years." Levin went on to laud Warner Bros. (a division of EW parent Time Warner) for taking a chance on the script, which not only clocked in at 150 pages but required a "hard" R rating for its violence and a budget north of $100 million, despite the fact that it came with no stars.
"Warners supported the whole package and I cannot begin to emphasize how ballsy and unprecedented a move this was on the part of a major Hollywood studio," wrote Levin, who produced the movie with Lawrence Gordon and Thomas Tull, among others. "Shouldn’t Warner Brothers be entitled to the spoils — if any — of the risk they took in supporting and making Watchmen? Should Fox have any claim on something they could have had but chose to neither support nor show any interest in?"
Fox, which prevailed in court last month when a judge ruled that it had distribution rights to the popular franchise, immediately issued a response to Levin’s letter: "We appreciate Mr. Levin’s passion for this project, but he has neglected basic facts and legal rulings. First, Fox notified Warner Brothers of our rights in this project months before production on the film began; they chose to ignore our rights on this occasion and several times after that and proceeded at their own risk.
"Two, only after having our rights in the film deliberately ignored by Warner Brothers did we take the action of filing litigation in order to have those rights recognized. In (the judge’s) Christmas Eve order, he specifically ruled that Warner Brothers had been timely notified and that Fox, in fact, had the rights we asserted. There is no question of who is right and who is wrong."
Warner Bros. and Fox will return to court Jan. 20 to discuss remedies, including the fate of Watchmen’s release on March 6.
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If Fox was any smart, they’d the whole movie alone and let it pass and only collect a certain percentage of the revenues. But Fox is full of morons and doesn’t see the logic. Leave the Watchmen alone.
if watchmen is moved.. I will boycott every Fox movie in 09′ yes Wolverine too
We fans need to figure something out to get our voices heard.
I strongly suspect Fox plans to force Warners to give them a percentage or payout. If they can get the film delayed it put them in a stronger position and put more pressure on WB to yield. In the long run this is giving the film more free PR and will likely increase the box office. As far as Levin’s comments about Fox’s comments about the script, I recall Snyder saying he was unhappy with it also and made them change it to adhere to the source material?
Levin is just trying not to look like a moron for producing a movie he never had the right to do from the start. Private property rights are fundamental to any society. Enthusiasm, for a Zac Snyder movie, no less, doesn’t trump that.
FOX people are idiots!!! WB is and has been the best studio for decades!!!!
Warners blew it. Fox acquired, with cold hard cash, the rights to make Watchmen and while they chose not make the movie, they still own those rights. At the very least they deserve a return on their investment. If someone produced a property that Mr. Levin held the rights to , I doubt he’d let the other party’s passion and artistry trump his right to compensation for the rights he bought. It’s basic law.
Sounds like those big plans for appeal must be going south real fast! This whole letter to the fans scheme and begging Fox to back off just reeks of desperation.
While I can’t speak to the legal issues (but everything I’ve read seems to to concur, if only begrudgingly or in passing, that Fox is in the right here), I’m glad the movie ended up being made by those with a genuine interest in and passion for the material. I’m not familiar with the Watchman story beyond small detail picked up here and there but it seems like a compelling story, and Fox is known for shody, shallow, and seemingly disinterest work as of late, no more so than in the comic properties it acquires. In the end, I just hope that the original cut it released without the Fox chop shop treatment. And the fans who think any kind of noticeable boycott of Fox will come about in the event of the unfavorable are deluding themselves. In time even they will go back to seeing their movies, assuming they ever actually stuck to the boycott at all.
This will do far more damage to Fox, regardless of the outcome. People who watch the industry or are a part of it see Fox as the bad guys here, and while this may not be a large segment of the population, it is a vocal one. Even a 2% dip in ticket sales or TV ratings will hurt this company which hasn’t had a hit film in quite some time. As ye reap…
Boycott Wolverine! If you buy a ticket to Fox’s Wolverine movie, then you are worse than Hitler.
I’m with Steve: we fans of Watchmen need to speak up, unite … something! Warner’s will recover from the loss, and Fox doesn’t care if we don’t go to their movies: enough other people will. Do enough of us really want a Watchmen movie to make a difference? This is *our* movie, not Fox’s.
hahaha. Drew McWeeny is using his real name now, is he? Anyway, this producer is full of it — he can bang the bars on his crib all he wants, but the fact remains they made a stupid decision not to deal with this BEFORE over 100 million dollars was spent. Just because you want to ignore something doesn’t mean it’s going to go away. Now they are paying the price.
And on an unrelated note: why do we get 1000 characters for these types of articles but only 500 for TV Watch and Reviews? Make it 1000 for everything, EW. It would make writing a lot easier on here.
While I admire WB for making the movie, the law’s the law and WB clearly flouted and needs to cut a deal with Fox. If we’re going to boycott, we should boycott something from each studio to make it clear they have to both work to solve the problem.
Fox sucks.
I love the X-Files. They made the second movie for that. Horrible. Yet they did not want to make Watchmen.
Yes, Fox owns the rights. They should have relinquished those rights as they were not going to do anything with what they called a piece of “sh*t”.
I will not watch anything Fox puts out other than Fringe on television. Other than that, they have nothing. The have nothing that’s why they like reality-tv crap.
Get real Fox. There is your reality.