Watchmen May Be Delayed to June?

The Comedian

Looks like the seemingly awesome adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen may be in trouble. In the worst kind of trouble possible. Legal trouble. Fox claims the rights to the masterpiece, which has resulted in some nasty tug-of-war between them and Warner Brothers.

While legal troubles go over the naive and petty heads of us bloggers, we have some disturbing news at hand. The trial itself may go all the way upto June. And since it doesn’t make sense that Fox would allow the movie to be released till then, that could only mean…

The movie may be delayed to after the trial is over, and that is at least June 2009. Bad news. The movie was already a ways off, at March 2009 and is now delayed further? Not that I seriously mind this: I’d wait for all eternity for a Watchmen movie, so what I find scarier is that…

Fox may be trying to sabotage the movie itself. That would mean that if Fox wins the battle, the movie might actually not come out and the trailer we just saw may go into the ancient halls of “Awesome Movies that Weren’t”. And that’s a scary picture for us Watchmen fans.

Two downloadable Watchmen games confirmed

Nite OwlMovie video game tie-ins aren’t news, but what Warner Bros. is trying to go with them is. Warner has announced that they will be experimenting with downloadable tie-in games for Watchmen and two are already in the works!

The first will be around the release of the movie (i.e. March 2009), while the second will arrive shortly after the DVD release. What’s more, if these two games end up successful, Warner will go ahead with further episodes.

Seeing the sorry fate of movie-based video games was probably what spurred Warner into action. The downloadable format means that the game will be shorter and more appealing to the fans. According to Warner, this model will end up better at pleasing fans and critics, which is definitely going to be a tough task.

Interestingly, the source article at Variety also says that if the series ends up successfull, there might even be future pics tie-ins with the games. We’re not sure if a downloadable series can get that successful, so we’re just gonna go with a “Yeah, right” for now.

Right now we know that the first game will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It will be developed by Danish developer Deadline Games. I checked out their Wikipedia entry and I don’t see any titles ringing any bells. The game will feature Rorshach and Nite Owl battling crime.

This would mean that the game is something of a prequel to Watchmen, where a close friendship between Rorshach and Nite Owl as crimefighting buddies is hinted at. Would be great to see this in the form of a video game, but again, we’re totally not sure if this is gonna work.