Virgin Comics no more

Publishers Weekly has confirmed that Virgin Comics has been shut down, with its New York offices closed and its staff laid off. Details here.

Virgin was one of the recent high-profile launches looking to make comics-to-film an official business plan. It had limited success in selling comics — they never set the charts on fire, though some of their books were decent reads — and it's not clear what the company's plans are for the many projects it had begun with Sci Fi Channel and talent like Hugh Jackman, Ed Norton, Guy Richie, John Woo and Nicolas Cage.

What this means for this kind of business plan as a viable way to make money is not completely clear, though it does seem to indicate that even companies with deep-pocketed parents can't survive indefinitely without making some kind of success and money at publishing actual comics.

'Watchmen' fans lash out at Fox for rights suit

Fans worried the legal battle between Fox and Warner over the rights to "Watchmen" may somehow affect the film's release or prevent it from being released at all are fighting back.

ComicBookMovie.com has started a petition urging Fox to not interfere with the movie's release, as well as an interview with Wyatt Barlup, a 20-year-old fan who wants to organize pickets of the Fox lot. Fans at sites like Comics2Film.com are even calling for a boycott of Fox that would affect the studio's holiday-set remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and next summer's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

Jeff Trexler (him again!) has the court documents posted for perusal over at Uncivil Society, and they make for some interesting (though confusing for us non-lawyers) reading.

Despite the heated rhetoric, it seems unlikely that the film won't come out on schedule. There's still plenty of time for the studios to work out their differences and figure out who's going to pay what to whom and make it all right again.

Bonus 'Watchmen' tidbit: "Hellboy II: the Golden Army" director Guillermo del Toro tells IGN AU that he was offered and turned down the job of directing "Watchmen" prior to Zack Snyder's taking the helm.

How hot can 'Watchmen' get?

"Watchmen" doesn't come out until March, but the interest the general public has in this comic adaptation is already showing signs of being the kind of crossover phenomenon that hasn't been seen in a comics property in a long time.

Since the trailer for the film came out the week before Comic-Con — and attached to prints of "The Dark Knight," now nearing a $500 million domestic gross — DC has printed 900,000 new copies of the graphic to meet demand. That number dwarfs the normal sales level for top-selling graphic novels. Even graphic novels based on movies do only a fraction of that business in the high-demand window that surrounds the release of such a movie. Add in that "Watchmen" has been a best-selling title ever since it was released as a graphic novel more than 20 years ago, and its' even more amazing.

And there's more to it than just high print runs and sell outs — "Watchmen" is in the zeitgeist. And it's as telling as this: I was at the supermarket a few days ago wearing a Comic-Con T-shirt that didn't mention or feature any characters from "Watchmen." but the kid at the checkout stand still asked me about Watchmen, saying he saw the trailer and wanted to know more about it. Was it like the "X-Men" movies? Or more like "Spider-Man"? I urged him to pick up a copy because there's no substitute for reading the book, when the woman in line behind me asked if she could buy the book at a regular bookstore or if she had to find a comic shop. No trailer (or finished movie for that matter) has interested as many people in actually reading a comicbook since the Batmania of 1989. All of which should have the marketing execs at WB drooling in anticipation.

Adding fuel to the fires of expectation is self-appointed King of the Nerds Kevin Smith has seen a cut of "Watchmen" and raves about it on MySpace, calling it "f---ing astounding."

Meanwhile, the judge in a the lawsuit between Fox and WB over the rights to the film refused a WB request to dismiss. Fox alleges the studio still owns the rights to the project and is seeking an injunction to prevent its release.

source: Variety