The excitement level for Watchmen burst through the roof and got shaken to its core in the past week following two announcements. First, we were told by growing internet maven Kevin Smith that he has seen the movie and that it is so good that Alan Moore may dig it. This is a wonderful piece of news but needs to be somewhat tempered. As pointed out by the gents on the SlashFilm podcast, it’s unclear first as to what version of the film Smith has seen. This could well be the rumoured three-hour cut which, very likely, does manage to cover and engage with all the issues that the comic gets to (and is apparently popular with fans). This is good but the likelihood of this version seeing the light of day prior to an extended DVD release is very low. Also, being a devoted listener of Smith on his SMODcast, I’m not quite sure of the strength of his movie recommendations, although that’s a very personal tempering of his opinion.

This is very exciting, but this was hammered later in the week by the news that 20th Century Fox has moved into the courts to get an injunction against Warner Bros releasing the movie as it currently still owns the rights to an adaptation of the comic (and apparently did contact them sooner about the issue that this might suggest). Seemingly too, all that the company wants to do is to prevent the film from being released at all, rather than just money. I’ve got to guess that what will eventually happen will be that Warner will pay for the rights or that Fox will just take a chunk of the eventual gross. They have a point for sure, but this is pretty silly really and surely, given the predilection for money that studio executives have, will be sorted with a few well marked bags of swag. Given fans however, this could have a potentially damaging impact on future Fox movies.

Still, the excitement level remains given that Watchmen has the potential to be great. Smith was a little over-excited about the trailer but his description of what the movie sounds like would be perfectly what fans would want to see from the film. The issues that could hit the film not may simply be the case of what’s in vogue. In this immediately-post-Dark Knight world, comic books movies have very strong currency. Should Heath Ledger and maybe even a few other participants (maybe Eckhart?) get Oscar nods, Zack Snyder could really dig his heels in and get his full cut released. But, the high hopes that are likely to be crushed following The Spirit (considering this and this) could harm and Warner may not be too interested in another challenging comic book movie and may plump for a big, silly slice of action. So let us all send our strong wishes for the Academy to recognise not only the costume and sound editing departments, and reward Ledger and also Wally Pfister for his cinematography. Maybe, just maybe, this will finally mean that it will be us watching the Watchmen. (Oh, dear.)