A super battle over 'Watchmen'

The iconic image from " Watchmen," Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' ground-breaking graphic novel, is a yellow button sporting the familiar happy-face design. Next to the cheerful smile, though, you'll find a foreboding splatter of blood. ¶ That good-news-bad-news contradiction also fits the high-stakes legal tussle surrounding the movie version of the novel -- a film that holds great creative and financial promise but is now being overshadowed by a bitter copyright- infringement lawsuit that threatens "Watchmen's" distribution. ¶ Directed by Zack Snyder and starring Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley, "Watchmen" is one of the spring's most anticipated releases, and fan interest exploded after Snyder showed his film's trailer at July's Comic-Con in San Diego. The sprawling Cold War-era drama about a band of masked crime fighters is scheduled to arrive in theaters March 6, almost two years to the day after Snyder's global blockbuster "300" premiered. ¶ It's taken more than 20 years and any number of false starts to bring "Watchmen" this far along: Forsaken film adaptations include versions from directors Terry Gilliam ("Brazil"), Paul Greengrass ("The Bourne Ultimatum") and screenwriter David Hayter ("X-Men"), with countless script revisions along the way. Joaquin Phoenix was once considered for Crudup's starring part as Dr. Manhattan, the all-powerful but tortured soul at the center of the "Watchmen" story. Early screenplay costs and abandoned preproduction fees total close to $10 million, and no fewer than four studios have worked on the movie over the decades, including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal.

By John Horn

November 16, 2008