WATCHMEN in trouble, Fox wins initial judge ruling over distribution

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. If you've been paying any sort of attention to the WATCHMEN film you know that Fox has been trying to stop its release, claiming they still own distribution rights from when they had the project in the early '90s. Now it appears that the initial ruling by the judge is that Fox is indeed the owners of distribution, but I'm a little puzzled... I guess I'm a little hazy on my Judicial studies from high school, but the trail is set for January, so I'm not exactly sure how a Judge can make any sort of ruling before the trial even takes place. Maybe one of our more intelligent (at least more than I) talkbackers can illuminate this for me. Whether they're legally in the right or not Fox has been incredibly shady with this from day one. They allowed Warner Bros to put a ton of money into this property and, if I'm not mistaken, even let them shoot most if not all of it before bringing this up, tying their hands completely and, if Fox wins, gets a free summer tentpole blockbuster while WB is left crying in the corner like I do after my pervy Uncle Fred comes to visit. (I don't really have an Uncle Fred, that was just pretend for laughs, see?) No matter what, I get a sick feeling that we may see a delay in Watchmen's release and if it gets into Tom Rothman's hands? Well, I shudder to think what he'll do with an R-rated 3+ hour long super hero deconstruction story, even one that is delivered to him as a freebie on a silver platter. Variety has the story here with the Judge promising a more detailed ruling after the holidays. Not a very Merry Christmas article, but now you know.