After twenty years of false starts, the most ambitious graphic novel ever created is finally just six months from the cineplex. Director Zack Snyder has finished shooting, and the trailer made a splash at Comic-Con, where even the notoriously harsh fanboy audience liked what they saw. No less a comic aficionado than Kevin Smith has seen the movie, and called it "f@%king astounding." And now Fox wants to spoil the party.

Watchmen's path to the screen has been lengthy and troubled. Its creator, Alan Moore, long ago abandoned any dealings with the film industry, and directors from Terry Gilliam to Darren Aronofsky to Paul Greengrass have tried their hand at adaptations as it bounced between Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount, and then Warners again. But now that Snyder is at work editing down his three-hour cut, Fox says it still has the rights. And wants the movie pulled, for good.

Fox filed suit in February '08, claiming that it never actually gave up the rights to make its own film. Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily gives a great breakdown of the complicated timeline (h/t Rope of Silicon), but the key seems to be this: Warner Brothers bought the rights to Watchmen from an independent producer who had a previous, never bought-out deal that gave distribution rights to Fox.

Fine, Fox may have the law on its side, and it looks like the Warner Brothers legal team might have dropped the ball. But when the suit was filed in February, the movie had already been in development at WB for two years and shooting was all but complete. If this is a legitimate suit, why wasn't it straightened out years ago? For that matter, why wasn't it addressed in 2004, when Paramount started production with Greengrass?

On August 18, the Warner Bros. motion to dismiss the lawsuit was denied, so the case will go to court, likely before the end of the year. Best case, Fox gets a share of the movie's profits. Fine, if you happen to be a WB shareholder that might be upsetting, but the rest of us peasants could care less as long as we get to cough up the cold green to see the movie. But the Fox lawyers say they actually want the movie yanked rather than just a cut of the cash.

Does Fox really have the stomach for a showdown? It has its own comic book properties at stake, including an army of X-Men spin-offs; will it risk alienating the audience by going down in history as the studio that killed Watchmen?

The history of film is filled with lost classics, from Orson Welles's Don Quixote, to the original uncensored climax of Taxi Driver, to the Roger Corman version of Fantastic Four. (Fine, that one can stay lost.) If Watchmen ends up with them, down the rabbit hole of dead movies, the fans may never forgive Fox.

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