20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Go to Court over Watchmen
The Zack Snyder film has already been filmed, but who owns its rights?
Major film studio Twentieth Century Fox has appealed to a Los Angeles court to prevent rival studio Warner Bros. from releasing Watchmen, a movie about flawed superheroes, to which Fox believes it owns the rights.
According to BBC News, the film, based on the comic books written by Alan Moore, was scheduled for a March 6 release, but Twentieth Century Fox claims to have bought the film rights to the series in the 1980s.
Watchmen, directed by 300's Zack Snyder and starring Patrick Wilson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, has already been filmed, but Fox is not giving up, having already been given the green light to launch an injunction against the rival studio.
According to BBC News, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess said last week that while Twentieth Century Fox may not hold all the rights to the series, it could own some of them. But it will take more than that to scare off Warner Bros.
"We respectfully disagree with Fox's position and do not believe they have any rights," said a Warner Bros. spokesman. "The judge did not opine at all on the merits, other than to conclude that Fox satisfied the pending requirements."
