WB, Fox tussle over 'Watchmen' rights

August 18, 2008 Warner Bros. is scheduled to release Zack Snyder's big-screen adaptation of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comics series on March 6, but a federal judge in Los Angeles complicated that plan Wednesday when he refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox against Warners over rights to the property. Judge Gary Allen Fees ruled that Fox has established enough evidence to support its claims that it holds the distribution rights to the film version of the 1980s graphic novel about damaged superheroes. Asserting what it calls its "long-standing motion picture rights" to "Watchmen," Fox said Monday that it will ask the court to "enjoin the release of the Warner Brothers film and any related 'Watchmen' media that violate our copyright interests in that property."

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