Thursday, January 08, 2009

A Producer of "Watchmen" Tells His Side of the Fox/Warner Bros. Story; And the Reasons for an Impending Lull

The other day, I posted Daniel O'Brien's nutritional advice to Fox studio executives, as well as my own reaction to the legal decision handed down on Christmas Eve regarding the inter-studio fight over the rights to "Watchmen."

Today, Lloyd Levin, one of the producers of "Watchmen", weighed in with an open letter. You can read it here. There's not a lot of vitriol in this letter (and certainly none of the hilarious variety as in Daniel O'Brien's), but there's a lot of new information, and some real, heartfelt disappointment. It's a persuasive letter. I'd be interested to hear some pro-Fox positions from knowledgeable fans or studio people in the know, but my hunch is we won't ever read anything like that because Fox only had one reason to sue: money. And no one gets passionate about defending greed.

Also, the frequency of my posts in the next few months may be even more anemic than they have been, as I'm devoting my free time to an art project. Here's a sample:

A friend of friend and blog reader Shawn H. is compiling a book project that would collect an assortment of short stories illustrated in comic form. I'm illustrating Shawn's short story, entitled "Finders Keepers," a "weird tale" about a young man's discovery of a glass eye imbued with strange powers. We hope it will eventually be part of the collection. I've got my fingers crossed.

Right now I've got two pages finished, and for the next few months, I'll be working on the other 7 that will comprise the first half of the story. Because my drawing style for this is so detail-intensive, I think this will grab up a lot of time I might otherwise spend posting up my inane blog entries. But on the plus side, it's a lot of fun to draw, Shawn's fantastic story is eerie and perfectly suited to comic book treatment, and when we're finished, we'll both have some interesting work in a different medium we can point to with pride.

Provided I don't f**k up that is.

So bear with me during this new lull in fresh inanities.

13 comments:

A Nest of Cranes said...

You won't f**k it up, they look great.

M

blankfist said...

You already f**ked it up. Too many lines, Liefeld.

Anonymous said...

Yes, you can all blame me for the lack of inanities. Muwhahahahaha!

Again, stuff looks awesome. Don't listen to Heath. He's like that dude in Amadeus who comments on an amazing composition by saying it has "too many notes." Exactly which lines would you have Crane remove??

Anonymous said...

I think that stuff looks awesome, Crane. Who needs writing when the pictures look so good! No offense, Shawn.

But, to take up the Fox side of things - I think Levin is no less interested in money than Fox is. And as someone else on the web pointed out, if Fox were to back out and kill the lawsuit, you think Levin would give the money that would've gone to Fox to all those passionate cast and crew members who made this movie happen? I doubt it. This is my own feeling, anyway. I haven't yet heard a persuasive argument as to why it was okay for WB to take something that Fox owned. They need to just pay up and be done with it.

Miller Sturtevant said...

The Liefeld slam stings dude. I'll remember that one. j/k

And thanks for the nice comments guys. I appreciate it.

As for your take on the Fox thing, Craig, I like it. It's true. This producer is no altruist, certainly,and if their positions were reversed in some way, it's unlikely he'd approach it differently. That said, I still think Fox is run by a bunch of douchers. I thought that before and I think it still. But good points.

I actually had a thought about the situation which has Fox playing the good guy in this, albeit unintentionally. They supposedly held the rights to this thing for 20 years. Did nothing with it. Lots of feints and stabs at maybe possibly doing it, but nothing real. (I just read that back in the day, Joel Silver approached Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore about producing it as a film with Arnold playing Dr. Manhattan. It's amazing Silver ever accidentally associated himself with a good movie.) So Warner decides to do it. Fox probably thought, "Hey, we own that! Somebody stop them!" And then someone a bit more devious says, "Let them hang themselves. It's unfilmable. It'll tank. It's got a naked blue man in it for chrissakes. Let them make it, and when they do, we'll strike." And so Warner put it on the line, made the movie. Fox struck.

But if Fox hadn't decided to do this in the most dickish way possible and had put the kibosh on the whole thing right at the inception of Zach Snyder's movie, we wouldn't have a Watchmen movie to see this year. We'd still be talking about how cool it would be if they ever made a movie of Watchmen.

So maybe Fox and Warner's actions here worked together to make the best possible outcome from what was a very tangly legal situation.

Anonymous said...

Agreed on that, Brian - I wouldn't be at all surprised if the folks at Fox took that exact wait and see approach, betting it would fail but knowing that if it looked good, they could swoop in for the kill.

blankfist said...

We have a new president. FYI.

blankfist said...

In the year 2009, Crane will refuse to write on his blog.

blankfist said...

Very quiet these days, Olberman.

blankfist said...

Chris Matthews not Impressed by Jindal.

blankfist said...

The movie has come out already! Jesus! WRITE SOMETHING, LAZY!

Anonymous said...

Incendiary

Anonymous said...

This blog has been inactive longer than three months. Google Blogspot will remove this blog permanently unless The lazy blogger, Crane, writes something. Anything.