The Studios’ Court: “Watchmen” vs. “Batman”

20th Century Fox filed a lawsuit trying to block the release of Warner Bros. long-awaited feature film adaptation of Watchmen, which is considered by many to be the best graphic novel of all time, and certainly one of the greatest superhero stories ever told. Fox waited until production was complete and post-production was underway to file this suit, leading many to believe they just wanted to mug WB for a cut of the profits rather than actually wanting to stop its release. Now it looks like this lawsuit might also be part of a bludgeoning tactic to force WB to let Fox have the rights to distribute the Adam West Batman series from the 1960s on DVD as well. Fox owns the TV footage, but WB owns the characters, and as such, the show has yet to make its way to DVD (and would take a lot more than this lawsuit to make it happen, anyway). So this is looking like it might get a bit ugly. Uglier, that is.