It seems that a nasty lawsuit that threatened the March 6 release of
Watchmen might be settled out of court. According to
Associated Press, attorneys on both sides of the Fox/Warner Bros. lawsuit over the upcoming
Watchmen film say that settlement talks have been quite productive.
A hearing was scheduled for today, but attorneys for both Fox and Warner Bros. asked U.S. District Judge Gary Allan Feess to delay the hearing so settlement talks could continue over the weekend. Feess agreed, but did indicate that a January 20 hearing is still scheduled to determine if the March 6 release will be blocked or not.
Fox lawyer Lou Karasik said that the delay would be "very very helpful" to the settlement talks, which he said were "productive." Fox originaly brought the lawsuit up in February, claiming that the studio still had rights to the film which Warner Bros. is releasing. Feess agreed last month that Fox still seemed to have the rights to distribute the film.
18 Comments
To give an example, lets say your a screenwriter, you create this awesome story, which myself as a producer executive like the idea and deem it as profitable and possible to do on screen.
Then i buy the specific subsidary rights off you (the copyright holder). This substantially means i have the right to turn your idea into whatever kind of subsidary right i bought, weather it was merchandise or movie, but the plus side is that due to you being the copyright holder you still gain profit of what i make
So therefore they'll have to split the profits with the revenues
I agree with you on the FOX thing, they use to be well-respected now it just seems like they are init for the money, but they've been taking to many risks lately.
DBZ & Street Fighter, the watchmen trial, 300 million dollars invested in Avatar.
Also thanks for the correction
Regardless of guilt in this matter, FOX is still a collective, steaming pile of unscrupulous, stupid, greedy, lying shit. EVERYONE WHO WORKS FOR THEM. I'm sorry if that ends up being you Ottley, but they are the scourge of Hollywood in both film and television (within the last 15 years)
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/2009-1-8-an-open-letter-from-watchmen-producers
It's Lawrence Gordan's
Lawrence owned the subisdary copyright, i think the copyright would be owned by DC and its creators of the comic.
But anyway Lawrence Gordan sold the rights to Fox in the late 80s / early 90s, i believe. But Fox deemed that the film after having the copyright for a while, Fox said the film was impossible to make and despite its fan-base and popularity among comic fans, it would never be done.
So Lawrence Gordan took back the rights but forgot the subsidary rights of distriubition and that was left with Fox.
Warner Bros then picked up the Sunsidary Right afters Fox dropped them, with years in production hell with not only Fox but also WB. They finally found the right man for the job Zack Synder. He did it.
But if Lawrence Gordan made sure he had the full subsidary copyrights all this wouldn't be happening right now.
Also subsidary copyrights are the rights to create other stuff from a copyright, like films, novels, games, merchandise etc etc.
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/2009-1-8-an-open-letter-from-watchmen-producers
Also, WB delaying a movie is fine because WB actually makes GOOD movies and they didn't sue another studio to get the rights to it...even if they did, it wouldn't be as important as Watchmen