Watchmen Legal Wrinkles Ironed Out

VARIETY: WB, Fox make deal for 'Watchmen'
Warner to open superhero film March 6
By MICHAEL FLEMING, DAVE MCNARY
Posted: Thurs., Jan. 15, 2009, 7:33pm PT

Warner Bros. and Fox have settled their very public battle over "Watchmen." A deal has been hammered out that that gives WB some face-saving points, but which gives Fox the equivalent of a movie star’s gross participation.

Warner Bros. gets the right to open its superhero pic on March 6 as planned, and Fox's logo will not be on the film, sources said.

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New Watchmen Trailer

I'm not a big fan of 300, but this trailer looks pretty nice. As far as comic-to-film adaptations go, though, I'm a bigger believer in the spirit of the law than the letter. Here's hoping that there's more than pretty pictures to look at neat year!

Thanks to io9.com for the clip!

New Watchmen Stills Up

Warner Brothers has posted stills featuring some of the main characters from the upcoming Watchmen film. They look quite faithful to the designs in the comic, aside from the DARK, DARK, DARK coating applied to virtually every comic book movie costume and set since Batman.

It's a nice look, but the book's a riff on old silver age characters, so I don't think it's as appropriate here. I don't know if you need fully saturated colors on spandex, but I think the once-innocent/fallen from grace contrast is integral to the concept.

To be honest, though, production design is the least of the challenges. Watchmen is a really dense, multi-layered story. While I don't think any story is unfilmable, this is certainly a ambitious assignment for a movie.

I was talking with a friend of mine today, and I'm wondering if a television mini-series might have been the way to go. You could go into more detail with six hours (or more) than you can with two. How's this for geeky? A TV mini-series. Twelve one-hour episodes, one a week, the final one airs at 11:00 PM - midnight. I'd buy that for a dollar!