Christmas Eve brought not-so-happy news for fans of the forthcoming Watchmen movie. The movie, produced by Warner Brothers, was the subject of a lawsuit, brought by Fox when the studio (rather suddenly) pointed out that they actually had the rights to the movie; producer Larry Gordon should have allowed Fox the option of producing and distributing the movie prior to taking it to another studio. Judge Gary Allen Feess agreed with Fox.

Now, the future of the one movie I was looking forward to in 2009 is in doubt. True, the movie wasn't supposed to come out until March, but I'd already bought the graphic novel from which the movie is derived and read it in preparation. I went out of my way for this movie.

So, now that the movie hangs in the balance, I'm a bit distraught. Fox ruined one of my favorite graphic novels, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by taking the dark hodge-podge of literary heroes and anti-heroes and turning their adventures into a popcorn flick, entirely lacking the depth of the novel and frankly ruining an excellent premise. I watched that movie after breaking an engagement, as my righteous indignation with the flimsy characterization was more than enough to temporary distract me from my own troubles.

Thus, my concern for Watchmen isn't entirely unfounded. Fox has a history of taking novels with philosophical depth (I, Robot, for example) and squashing it down to fit into an imagined timeframe, in the process removing the meat of the concept. If Fox acquires Watchmen, my concern is that the studio will slash the running time, perhaps making significant changes in the plot. On Christmas Eve, instead of visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, I had nightmares of film strips littering the cutting room floor, each one cutting away one of the layers of moral quandaries that make Watchmen an excellent graphic novel.

Of course, I could very well be worried for nothing. Warner Bros. could pay Fox for the movie, for example, or win on appeal. Of course, the latter would delay the movie even further, but I suppose a delayed movie is better than no movie at all.

All that being said, I can't help but be concerned that the movie just won't live up to the hype. Though the producer had excellent source material to work with, a great novel doesn't necessarily mean a great movie, as we saw with The Time Machine and approximately ever other version of Dracula. So I could be worrying over nothing - the movie could be awful anyway.

The judge's ruling was probably the technically "correct" one; copyright law is not at all a specialty of mine. That does not, however, mean that I particularly have to like the results. Frankly, I would have traded at least some of the clothes I got for Christmas, maybe even some of the gift cards, for a ruling going the other way.