Because what would we have to be disappointed about then? The weather? Our jobs? The way we can’t grow a proper beard? No, Fox didn’t want to just block Watchmen – it wanted to block our right to be chronically disappointed by Watchmen, and that wasn’t on.

Luckily, though, the crisis has been averted. Fox and Warner Bros have resolved their legal squabble, and Watchmen is coming out as planned. That means our plan to slag it off before we’ve seen it remains intact! Yay!

Watchmen is undoubtedly one of the must-see movies of the year, provided that you’re a) a virgin, b) a pleb and c) so afraid of going outside that your skin has become the same colour as your bedroom walls.

And, to be fair, you’ve got every reason to be excited about Watchmen’s release – not jut because it’s a Zac Snyder movie so it’s bound to be brimming with so much latent homoeroticism that it’ll make WWE wrestling seem like an episode of The View, but because it almost wasn’t going to be released in the first place.

As we’ve mentioned before, we’ve had to put up with endless squabbling between Fox and Warner Bros over Watchmen – first Warner Bros made Watchmen, and then Fox said that it actually owned Watchmen and that Warner Bros shouldn’t have made it, and then Warner Bros was all like ’screw you’ and Fox was all like ‘no, screw YOU!’ and then Warner Bros said something about Fox’s mum giving blowjobs to sailors and Fox took Warner Bros to court to block Watchman’s release.

It all got very messy, especially when a judge ruled that Fox had an interest in Watchmen on Christmas Eve. Since then, Fox and Warner Bros have been in a series of protracted negotiations about who owns which part of Watchmen and, more importantly, how many frightened southeast Asian prostitutes they’ll be able to buy with their cut from the movie. Possibly.

But since this is Hollywood we’re talking about, it’s time for the happy ending. People, Fox and Warner Brothers have smoothed things over and Watchmen’s March release date stands firm. Reuters reports:

Terms of the agreement will not be disclosed, but it is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film’s box office, which Warners plans to release March 6. Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it own a piece of the “Watchmen” property going forward. The studios are set to release a joint statement announcing the agreement Friday.

Well, this is good news all round, isn’t it. Warner Bros gets to release a movie that comicbook fans have salivated over for two entire decades, Fox gets a large injection of cash and, best of all, what with Watchmen AND Terminator Salvation coming out in coming months, there’ll be two movies this year that take a painful, slobbery dump in the eye of things we used to like. Hooray for everything!

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That’s if Watchmen is released this year, of course. Thanks to a petty squabble between Warner Bros (which made Watchmen) and Fox (which says it owns the rights to Watchmen), nothing looks certain any more. And now one of the movie’s producers, Lloyd Levin, has waded in on the issue by writing a letter calling everyone at Fox big old smellyheads. We’re paraphrasing.

So Watchmen still might not be released this year. That’s OK, we’re sure we’ll be just as disappointed by Terminator Salvation.

It’s hard to know why people are so excited at the prospect of seeing the Watchmen movie this spring. On reflection, we think we’ve boiled it down to three reasons:

1 - They’re gigantic Alan Moore fans.

2 - They can’t believe that the movie has actually been made at all.

3 – They’re stinking, lonely, friendless geeks and their only companion is their crusty ejacu-sock.

But forget the first and last reasons for the time being – much of the excitement about Watchmen comes from the fact that people have been trying to make it for 20 year. Terry Gilliam had a go at making Watchmen and failed. Darren Aronofsky had a go and failed. Paul Greengrass had a go and failed. Jude Law was going to be in it at one point. Simon Pegg was going to be in it at one point. Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be in it at one point. Dig hard enough and you’ll probably discover that you’d been briefly considered for the role of Dollar Bill at some point in the mid-1990s.

Because of the immense amount of time that Watchmen took to get to the screen, it’s spent much of the last two decades being shuttlecocked between movie studios at an astonishing rate. Fox had it for a while, Universal had it for a while, Paramount had it for a while, Revolution had it for a while and finally Warner Bros ended up making it. And that’s where all the confusion lies.

Fox is currently suing Warner Bros with the intention of either cashing in on Watchmen’s release or stopping it completely, claiming that it still owns the rights to the movie. On Christmas Eve a judge ruled in Fox’s favour, and now Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin has been reduced to writing a letter online telling Fox to back off and let him release his film. The LA Times reports:

Lloyd Levin said Fox repeatedly passed on making director Zack Snyder’s epic superhero movie and was now trying to take advantage of Warner Bros.’ willingness to develop and produce it. “Shouldn’t Warner Bros. be entitled to the spoils — if any — of the risk they took in supporting and making ‘Watchmen’? Should Fox have any claim on something they could have had but chose to neither support nor show any interest in?”

With any luck, the coming weeks will see another round of court hearings to decide for good who owns what when it comes to Watchmen. We’d imagine that the worst-case scenario would involve Watchmen’s release being shelved indefinitely. But even that’s not the end of the world.

Look at it this way – if Watchmen doesn’t come out, the geeks will cry. If Watchmen does come out, it’ll probably be fairly awful and the geeks will still cry. Either way there’ll be some crying geeks. It’s a win-win.

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Now, if you are not familiar with V, let us explain. It’s about rodent-eating alien lizards who come to Earth and act like a right bunch of Nazis. Think David Icke without the rodents – and the Nazis.

They basically want to nick all our water and then eat us because, well, they are not very nice rodent-eating alien lizards. There are even loads of Nazi-like references to ram home the point.

Warner Bros are going to produce the V remake, while the guy in charge of writing it will be The 4400 co-creator/exec producer Scott Peters – so it is probably going to suck.

But we are trying to stay positive here at Hecklerspray. We are excited about yet another TV series from our childhoods being put through the mangle to make yet more cash – honest.

Hopefully, it will be as good as the Battlestar Galactica remake. One thing is for sure – judging from the clip we have added below – they can’t do any worse with the special effects. Don’t worry kids! The only harm done to any pets included in the clip was to their credibilities as animal actors.

Anyway, speaking to Variety, Peters, who had always insisted he would not do another sci-fi project, says it was an offer he could not refuse. He said:

“Whenever I mention ‘V’ to anybody, they still have a lot of good memories about the original movie and series. Everybody has that imagery of their uniforms, or the visitor eating a hamster. It’s a science fiction icon and too good to pass up.”

So are any of the original cast going to be offered roles in the new series? You would bet they would certainly like to, as the only person to have any semblance of a decent career afterwards was Robert Englund, who is, of course, Freddie Krueger. In fact, you would imagine there are a few stars from the original series who would happily eat their own pets to get included.

Well, the answer is, probably not, because the new series will instead focus on some new characters, and in particular, Erica Evans, a Homeland Security agent whose son falls for their dastardly lizard lies.

One thing is for sure, V no longer stands for ‘victory’.

The amusing for five seconds Harry Pothead series was a hit with morons everywhere, and recently an independent encyclopedia detailing all the characters, spells and abuse suffered by pupils from Dumbledore was due for release.

So imagine Warner Brothers’ delight when it found out about an up and coming film called Hari Puttar. Their lawyers cast some magic spells immediately to stop the film being released.

It’s been a frantic couple of months for the Harry Potter brand. Only a few weeks ago was it announced that the film was being pushed back from November till summer 2009. At first, all blame was placed on Daniel Radcliffe wanting to take advantage of his winky-waving ability and include it in a scene with Hermione all about the rights of passage of her becoming a fully fledged woman. However the real reason was apparently due to fine tweaking of the movie and definitely not Warner Bros not having any films ready for next summer to make money from.

Now, Hollywood is responsible for Harry Potter, whilst India’s Bollywood film industry has produced Hari Puttar. Granted, the two sound vaguely similar which will have caused a high ranking businessman to drop his double decaf filtered latte with extra sprinkles on to the floor.

But before all Harry Potter’s fans cast spells and attempt to fly over to India to hurl magic wands at the people of the country, bear in mind what the words mean. A simple translation of the seemingly copyright infringing title Hari Puttar means Son Of Harry. That’s because Hari is a popular Indian name for a boy and Puttar means son in the Punjabi language.

Of course, the traditional values of a country mean nothing to a Hollywood agent who may lose his $1million bonus. Consequently, the Hari Puttar film is still being sued. We don’t think the studio will win once you read what the plot is about. BBC News reports:

“It tells the story of a 10-year-old boy who moves to England with his parents and becomes embroiled in a battle over a secret microchip.”

Unless the film starred Adam Sandler, that sort of thing would never be commissioned for a slack-jawed audience to lap up. Unless Warner Brothers plan to release a film in the future where Harry has an adopted son with his former school teacher and they need a microchip to combat him breaking his ASBO order, we don’t see it working.

Hari Puttar was apparently registered in 2005 according to BBC News, so it appears that Warner Brothers are attempting to bully the film into never being shown. We’re sure a judge will see sense when the issue comes to court in India on September 12. If anything, a suitable ruling would be to make sure Warner Brothers can’t release anymore gash adaptations of books.

While normally this would be greeted with trepidation and a slight amount of fear, the sheer quality of the source material, combined with the fact that the film is supposed to actually be, y’know – good – has people sweating around the groin, awaiting next year’s release.

That is, unless Fox have their way and ban the film from ever coming out.

Oh, we’re not kidding here – that’s what they’re trying to do in the latest of legal battles that shows just how the company is actually forged from Satan’s testicles themselves. There’s evil, then there’s Fox evil.

This is the company that cancelled Family Guy in its prime – though they did bring it back, they actually ended up becoming more evil by letting the damn thing continue, seeing as it’s turned into utter tripe in recent years. Then there was the cancellation of Firefly, but we won’t go into that – it’s still too painful. They cancel, they block, they ruin and they devour, and they never seem to stop.

Next on their list is Zack Snyder, director of 300, and his adaptation of Watchmen, the classic 80s comic series that ranks amongst the finest books ever written. Apparently. With some nice spoof adverts.

The film is bankrolled and due for release through Warner Bros early next year, but some convoluted and complicated legal wrangling has revealed that Fox are claiming that they own the rights to a film release of the property.

While this came about in February of this year, well before Watchmen fever had truly got a hold of the internets, it has been decided recently by a judge that Warner Bros could not have the case thrown out of court as they had asked.

What this means is that Fox are free to pursue their copyright infringement case against Warner Bros, and are looking to get back either damages for the trouble – sure to be a few quid at the very least – or, in a worst case scenario, ban the movie from being released indefinitely.

And it looks like Fox’s band of lawyers, built as we all know from pure evil, are looking to force a worst case scenario – pushing to kill the project altogether rather than take some of its potentially huge box office. A statement released by Fox read:

“Warner Bros.’ production and anticipated release of ‘The Watchmen’ motion picture violates 20th Century Fox’s long-standing motion picture rights in ‘The Watchmen’ property.”

Which is pretty standard stuff until you realise they seemingly don’t even care enough to get the name of the comic right in the first place. So if they don’t even care about that, do they care about you, the fans – the public? Do they bollocks. It’s idiots in suits playing at running the world again, and it’s getting to be a bit annoying now.

But hey, at least Fox can clear the way for their own films to come out next year, and there’ll be no risk of them being compared side-by-side with Watchmen. That could be viewed as a good point. If you were mental.

The case is far from settled, though Fox are pushing for it to be fast-tracked through the courts. Probably so they can get back to stealing candy from orphanages, or burning down babies or something.

Today’s vitriolic rant brought to you by hunger pains and a lack of coffee. We will resume normal service shortly.

First he stopped jumping around like a particularly stupid chimp, he stopped going on about Scientology in public – though he did see some of his private video collection released, much to the delight/terror (delete as appropriate) of the general public – and he’s seeing some rave reviews flying about for his small role in Tropic Thunder. So what next?

Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Star in a superhero film, and get someone like Sam Raimi on board to produce. Which is, apparently, what’s being pushed for by Tom Cruise and Warner Bros, who own the rights to Sleeper – a short running comic book series from a few years back. Well, Raimi’s already on board, but you get the point.

And you can’t fault the man’s logic.

The rumoured decision happily fits in with our theory that Hollywood is physically incapable of having an original thought, ever, ever, ever. It also fits in with the current logic that if you make a film of a comic book it will make a lot of geeks wet with anticipation, thus creating millions upon millions of dollars to line the executive’s pockets with. And we all know how much they love money over there in movieland.

Valuing cash over creativity, honesty or integrity? Say it ain’t so! Ahem.

It appears, if reports are to be believed, that the latest in the line of films the studios hope will emulate the success of Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight is an adaptation of Sleeper – a limited series that ran from 2003-05 from the Wildstorm Universe and written by Ed Brubaker, whose writing credits include some work on X-Men and Captain America comics, amongst many others.

It does strike us that such a smalltime comic wouldn’t be the best of the potential earners out there for the studios and actors, but hey ho – it’s their money to waste and, who knows, they might get it right.

They won’t. But, you know – we are the bastions of truth, glory and optimism in the world of the internet. Wait, what? We’re not? Ah crap, Stu isn’t going to be happy…

The connection of Tom Cruise with the project has come about through the usual web of lies/rumours that prop up countless websites across the world, though it did originate at somewhere half-decent in the shape of The Hollywood Reporter, meaning we can leave it to them to explain the finer points:

Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, “Sleeper,” which ran from 2003-05, centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact. He is placed undercover in a villainous organization by an intelligence agency and falls for a member of the group, named Miss Misery.

Which sounds absolutely ideal for some big names to get attached to, a plethora of nerds to claim they read the book when it first came out (even though they picked it up off eBay on hearing the news a film was in the making) and a film to come out and get critically panned, while earning a small amount of cash.

You heard it here first.

We should also point out: superpowers afforded by the film adaptation still won’t allow Tom Cruise to keep pizzas warm using magic. Just thought we should point that out yet again.

OK, that's a lie. We do want Harry Potter to end. Sometimes we wish that Harry Potter had never been born at all. But the Warner Bros big cheeses who rely on Harry Potter to keep them in private jets and man-made vagina-shaped residential islands don't want Harry Potter to end.

And what they say goes, because it's just been made official that Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows will be turned into two separate movies. Now Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows will be released in November 2010, with its sequel Harry Potter And The Even More Deathlier Hallows That Make The First Lot Of Deathly Hallows Look A Bit Wimpy And Shit will follow in May 2011.

The 'nine and a half' tactic is key in the fields of teaching and parenting. You threaten a naughty child with violence and give them until the count of then to behave. But then you get to nine and they're still defying you. Reaching ten means that you're either going to have concede authority to a screaming infant or actually punch it and live with the guilt for the rest of your life. So, suddenly, in a desperate attempt to draw it out, you blurt out "nine and a half" instead of "ten." 

Harry Potter's studio Warner Bros knows the 'nine and a half' tactic too, because it's just announced the biggest nine and a half of cinema history – it's splitting Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows in two.

The Harry Potter movies have been good for Warner Bros – each of the five made so far has a spot in the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time. But the thing is, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows is the last Harry Potter book. Once that's been turned into a film there's nowhere left to go, unless Warner Bros decides to go with that unauthorised Harry Potter Vs The Dinosaurs On The Planet Of Tits spec script that we sent them last week.

Well, not quite nowhere to go, because Warner Bros has decided to follow through on threats it made in January and turn Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows into two separate movies. But it's not because they want to con the public out of twice as much money as before, oh no. As Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe – who's just made twice as much money from Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows as he thought he would – explains, it's because the book's quite long.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

"I think it's the only way you can do it, without cutting out a huge portion of the book. There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut — although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans — but the seventh book doesn't really have any subplots. It's one driving, pounding story from the word go." … Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Entertainment, [said] "This way, we have an extra hour and a half, at least, to celebrate what this franchise has been and do justice to all the words and ideas that Jo has put in the amazing story," Horn said. "This is the end of the story too. We want to celebrate it. We want to give a full meal." 

And, you know, if they can give a full meal and make a cheeky extra $900 million at the same time, well then that's just dandy.

Also, the matter of who'll direct the Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallow movies has been cleared up. Although reports suggested that Steven Spielberg and Guillermo Del Toro wanted a shot at Harry Potter, directing duties will fall to David Yates, who'll have ratcheted up his tally of Harry Potter movies to four by the time the final Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows movie comes out.

That's if the second Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows movie really is the last one – splitting the movies is such a license to print money that we wouldn't be surprised if the second half of the second movie becomes a new film. And there's probably six or seven movies to be made of the lame epilogue bit at the end where it turns out that Harry Potter doesn't die.

Read more:

'Deathly Hallows' films are scheduled to be released in November 2010 and May 2011. - LA Times