Watchmen fans, you will see your movie on March 6th, rejoice.

Warner Bros, you might have lost the ability to make this thing profitable..

From THR:

Warner Bros. and Fox have resolved their dispute over “Watchmen,” with the studios scheduled to present a settlement to Judge Gary Feess this morning and request that the case be dismissed.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the deal is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film’s boxoffice grosses; Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it co-own the “Watchmen” property, but it will share in revenue derived from it. The studios released a joint statement last night.

So Warners is stuck co-distributing it with Paramount already and now will have to pay out some cash in advance to 20th Century Fox as well as cut them a percentage of the total gross. Add in that Warner Bros already split the financing of the film with Legendary pictures and will need to return some of teh gross to them.

Is Warners going to make any money?

One thing that looks interesting is the intention of the studio to get legal fees from Watchmen producer Larry Gordon:

Gordon is not a party to the case, but Warners is said to be after the producer and his attorneys to reimburse the studio for costs of the settlement. During the litigation, Gordon’s then-attorney admitted that he negotiated the producer’s 1994 separation from Fox without knowing about a 1991 agreement on which Fox based its lawsuit.

We always hoped that Watchmen wouldn’t be sequalized, but now it looks like the only party that will make substantial gains on this project is 20th Century Fox, and all they did was NOT make the movie in the first place.

Does it seem odd to you that not making a movie gets you more money than actually making a good movie?