Thankfully, Fox didn’t win its claim to prevent the finished film from debuting, but the settlement that the studio won from Warner Bros. did entitle the studio to revenue from all future spin-offs and sequels.
This would have been on top of another battle that Warner Bros. had with 20th Century Fox, who filed a lawsuit to block Watchmen’s release in the months preceding the film’s March 2009 release date.
With Watchmen achieving only a modest amount of money over its budget at the box office, it becomes easier to see why Warner Bros. didn’t jump at the chance to mount a huge production in the world of Moore and Gibbon’s revolutionary comic.
That lawsuit stated that Fox felt it had a claim to the film’s rights, no matter how many times the project was put into turnaround, regardless of how many studios bought and shifted the project around town.