Studios in settlement talks over “Watchmen” film
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ñ Attorneys for two studios fighting over the upcoming superhero movie “Watchmen” told a judge on Friday they were in settlement talks, sources said.
U.S. District Judge Gary Feess, presiding over the copyright dispute between Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros. and News Corp’s Twentieth Century Fox, was expected on Friday to rule on whether to move up a January 20 hearing on the movie’s planned March 6 release.
But with the attorneys saying they were in talks, Feess delayed his decision on whether to move up the hearing. If there is no settlement, a new date could be set next week.
Warner Bros. produced the movie based on a 1980s comic book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons about superheroes operating under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
But Fox, which acquired the rights to the “Watchmen” story in 1986, claims it has a continuing stake in the film, and Feess last month ruled that the studio owned “at the very least, a distribution right” in the film.
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