Given Dr. Manhattan's control of matter, it's entirely possible that he's purposefully shaped his vocal chords to recreate something like his human voice.

Maybe it's the Phantom Menace expectation.

Before the movie...
"Fuckin' brand new Star Wars man! Wooooo!"

After...
"Goddamn, Lucas raped my childhood. Pig fucker!"

A producer on the film offers his thoughts on the legal dispute here:
very interesting new insights about how this thing started production off in the first place :
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-...hmen-producers

Excerpt:
"Now here's the part that has to be fully appreciated, if for nothing more than providing insight into producing movies in Hollywood: The Watchmen script was way above the norm in length, near 150 pages, meaning the film could clock in at close to 3 hours, the movie would not only be R rated but a hard R - for graphic violence and explicit sex - would feature no stars, and had a budget north of $100M. We also asked Warner Brothers to support an additional 1 to 1.5 hours of content incurring additional cost that would tie in with the movie but only be featured in DVD iterations of the film. Warners supported the whole package and I cannot begin to emphasize how ballsy and unprecedented a move this was on the part of a major Hollywood studio. Unheard of. And would another studio in Hollywood, let alone a studio that didn't show one shred of interest in the movie, not one, have taken such a risk? Would they ever have made such a commitment, a commitment to a film that defied all conventional wisdom?

Only the executives at Fox can answer that question. But if they were to be honest, their answer would have to be "No.""

While a good take on Fox passing on the project a few years back, I was hoping to find out more about what kind of stake Fox actually had as far as rights to the movie.

I still don't understand how you could get to the whole film being in post-production before Fox realizes they had the rights. Wouldn't this be something you do when the film is announced at another studio?

That's what I'm sayin'. It's like Fox waited until the "right" moment....

Second letter:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...fa53ab98a5d08c

It appears that an agreement made (or not made) in 1991 is the issue.

The movie looks pretty sweet but I've never read the graphic novel before so I decided to hop onto the local library's website to check it out last night. I went to reserve it and apparently I'm #26 in line to check it out.

In the comic his speech balloons are blue, which sort of implies that there's something going on with his voice. It might be an interesting trick if, in the movie, when Manhattan speaks his voice comes out of all of the surround speakers at the same time.

On a similar note, Rorschach's speech balloons are ragged, which is comic book shorthand for a gravelly, rough voice. (Though his out-of-costume speech balloons are normal, which implies that his voice is different in and out of costume.)

Just buy it you wimp! If you can have 30 games sitting on the shelf that haven't been touched, you can afford a $15 comic

Attorneys: 'Watchmen' settlement talks productive

Attorneys for rival studios fighting over the release of the superhero flick "Watchen" say they're having fruitful settlement talks.

Attorneys for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. asked a federal judge to delay a hearing Friday so settlement discussions can continue over the weekend.

U.S District Judge Gary Allen Feess agreed to continue the hearing but says a trial over whether to block the film's March release is still set for Jan. 20.

Fox is suing to stop the release of "Watchmen," claiming Warner Bros. violated its interests by filming the tale. Feess agreed last month that Fox appears to have the right to distribute the film.

Since then, the two sides have made concessions and according to court documents, conducted settlement talks last weekend.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090109/...uZz9_TX5txFb8C

WOO HOO! Here's hoping they can get this settled out of court, get Fox their unjustly sought after money and get us the movie on March 6th as planned!

Yes, they waited until WB sink hundreds of millions of dollars into the film so they could leech off a portion of the profits without lifting a finger. Really nice, Fox. That being said, I would be really surprised if the film's release date is delayed. Really surprised.

Corvin: Buy the graphic novel. You won't regret it.

I say get CDisplay and d/l a copy of it. I'm glad I didn't give into the hype and bought the actual graphic novel. I'm 6 books in and I still don't see what the big deal is.

As for the movie, I'll still probably check it out even if I don't end up finishing the comic. It looks interesting enough even if it seems that Snyder's still in a slomo=drama kick.

I just read it and didn't see the big deal either.

But then I thought about when it came out and the silly stuff around then... I can only assume it probably seemed very revolutionary at the time (even though our 2009 eyes have since caught up to it).

Watchmen takes time to digest. Like all great pieces of literature, it works on many levels and not everything is apparent on a first read-through.

Phooey to "2009 eyes" - it's still leagues better than most anything produced today.

Finish it and I guarantee a few days later you'll still be thinking about it and ready to re-read it... the whole is definitely greater than the sum of it's parts.

It also shows off the potential of the comic medium more than anything that came before. Moore gets away with all kinds of maneuvers that would be silly if a novelist or screenwriter tried them (the comic-within-a-comic as example A1), and the use of noir conventions (Rorschach's hard-boiled voiceover) within a book that's deconstructing the conventional golden-age comic is great fun.

It's a comic series for mature fans of comic books. It's also why so many people are skeptical of even the idea of the film, as it's unclear that Snyder understands why or how the comic works, much less that he knows how to film some of the more difficult aspects of the serial. 300 doesn't offer much hope, as all he showed was that he was capable of taking a blood-soaked Miller dickfest and making it worse by adding a bunch of senatorial squabbling.

I just thought it was OK when I first read it. Re-read it recently and felt the same. It's decent, but I would put it far down on my list of favorite graphic novels.

To be fair to Fox, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes before the suit was filed. There likely was a large number of legal letters going back and forth between the studios for at least a few weeks, if not months. Also, you don't file a suit without a lot of legal preparation, which can take weeks on end as well. Also, the buyback clause in Fox's contract might've confused issues, since Fox may have assumed that that clause would eventually be exercised while the film was still in pre-production, and it wasn't until the project started shooting that Fox realized WB had forgotten to buy them out.

While it's true that legal stuff takes a while to prepare, but when it was announced the film was greenlit, I'm pretty sure regardless of the fine print, the head of Fox could have phoned the head of Warner and said 'You might want to hold on a second there..."

Exactly. Hell, I'd even surmise that even before a movie is greenlit most of the bigwigs in Hollywood know what's in the works at each studio.

Here's an statement from Fox posted 1/9/9 as an update to an article linked to earlier:
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-...hmen-producers

Fox was smart. they probably waited until this was being filmed or halfway done filming before they started sending legal notices. that way, all the work was done or more than enough to where WB wouldn't stop. now they can reap the benefits of their work without having to do much other than sue them. brilliant!