The Watchmen Studio Blood Feud pitting Fox against Warner Bros. in a copyright scuffle to the death is turning more shrill by the minute, with outraged fanboys filling the public space from which studio lawyers retreated on Tuesday. One war-zone observer filed a particularly harrowing dispatch this morning, describing the spillover onto the Web and the violent counterattack calling for a boycott of Fox should its claim to Watchmen's rights delay the film's release. A more militant protest suggested pirating Fox's own troubled summer offering Wolverine instead, leaving an exasperated Fox spokesman to swat defensively as mouthbreathers descended from all sides:

Outfoxed: Though ticket prices continue to rise and box office records are broken nearly every week, this will be 20th Century Fox's first summer without a $100 million hit since (yikes) 1997. How could anyone have predicted such dire earnings from a blockbuster slate that boasted Space Chimps, an X-Files sequel made a decade too late, and twin bombs from Eddie Murphy and M. Night Shyamalan? As the LAT's Patrick Goldstein notes, Fox toppers Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos have held their position for nine years — will this be the year one (or both) gets the axe? If so, we hear there's a certain toothy mogul who might be looking for work... [LAT]

Variety reports today that 20th Century Fox and Hallmark have reached a landmark licensing agreement granting the greeting card giant exclusive use of the studio's library. While Hallmark has already issued cards for properties like Napoleon Dynamite and has its eye on major titles including Futurama and The Sound of Music, Defamer wrangled a hold of mockups for Hallmark's "Turbulence at Fox '08" line — a selection celebrating the beauty and joy of life through Fox's bumpy year at the box-office. Follow the jump for a glimpse at warm greetings to come by way of Manoj Night Shyamalan, Eddie Murphy, The X-Files and others, and feel free to suggest your own heartfelt pairings as well.

Welcome to the latest edition of Defamer Attractions, your regular Friday guide to another oversaturated summer weekend of new movies. While The Dark Knight sets up Batcamp for another week at number one, another brooding franchise goes up against Team Apatow in the also-ran camp. A British classic gets a fine art-house face-lift, meanwhile, and a windfall of new DVD's will keep the agoraphobes among us busy for a while. As always, our opinions are our own, but they're bulletproof, so read on for the only filmgoing advice that matters. WHAT'S NEW: The primary competition for The Dark Knight's second weekend will be... itself. You have to feel for Sony and Fox for dropping Step Brothers and X-Files: I Want to Believe opposite History's Greatest Film, but that's just the kind of extraordinary season it's been. Those films will perform decently enough, though — roughly $30 million for the Judd Apatow-produced Ferrell/Reilly comedy, $21 million for the sci-fi franchise adaptation — which is another bummer for Fox, which has only its overachieving The Happening to show for a long, lean summer at the box office.Also opening this weekend are the concert/protest film CSNY: Deja Vu; the oversexed '60s groupie chronicle Eight Miles High; Nanette Burstein's controversial pseudo-doc American Teen; the small-town gardener doc (seriously) A Man Called Pearl; and Minnie Driver's middling psychological drama Take. THE BIG LOSER: Not so much a "loser" as a handicapping interest of ours, Christian Bale's reported mum-thumping exploits — however blown out of proportion the actually are — could drop The Dark Knight a few percentage points more than it otherwise would have. But even if plunges by 50% (which it won't), it'll still nab $80 million, so again, save your pity for Fox.

We're keeping our distance from the large-scale fanboy marketing orgy that is San Diego Comic-Con, in part because we've already got our hands full grappling with Warners' Dark Knight Dark Publicity™ campaign, but also in part because Defamer's frugal travel policy requires hitchhiking for journeys longer than 100 miles [Ed. Note - Sorry STV, the policy has changed to 50 miles — effective immediately]. Sadly, we missed our only other option: The City of Ember train, chartered by Fox and Walden Media on Wednesday to transport select film writers on an all-expenses-paid romp from LA to San Diego. With a junket, of course. And cookies. And a jazz band! And apparently some kind of "loyalty oath" to the fantasy epic's titular metropolis where Bill Murray presides as mayor: "We swear eternal loyalty to our city and to the wisdom that created it. We declare our infinite gratitude..." No shit — with the exception of CHUD editor Devin Faraci's tasteful incest-joke interlude, Fox and Co. are making out brilliantly with MTV, the LA Times and others among the "23 key journalists and bloggers" handpicked to fellate Ember to an early, rousing throb. And nobody is more grateful than the filmmakers, who think unquestionably highly of Ember and its audience:

Patrick Goldstein is getting kind of good at this blogging thing! After a busy week tipping the world off to the wit and wisdom of censor nonpareil Joan Graves and catching Alan Horn sharpening his ax for Where the Wild Things Are, he spent Monday afternoon taking on the Eddie Murphy Problem. "Murphy has pulled off an almost unprecedented achievement with Meet Dave," Goldstein notes. "He's delivered a movie that even 20th Century Fox couldn't market."

We needed a little time today to digest our feelings after the miserable box-office showing of Meet Dave, whose free-fall over the weekend resulted in the ugliest opening of Eddie Murphy's career. Not having seen it, we have to assume that $5.1 million gross aside, the film is at least superior to Norbit (not to mention Vampire in Brooklyn, Pluto Nash and a sprinkling of other Murphy misfires over the years). We'd even venture to say it'll be better than Beverly Hills Cop IV, the PG-rated abomination to which Murphy and Brett Ratner are attached for Paramount. Certainly it's better than The Love Guru, whose own beleaguered comic icon Mike Myers nevertheless had flowers and a thank-you note on Murphy's porch by sometime Sunday afternoon.

While visitors to NBC/Universal can still smell the singed flesh from Jeff Zucker's recent experiment in self-immolating sitcom introductions, the bloom of Tom Rothman's ongoing cable-hosting gig apparently has yet to wear off for viewers of the Fox Movie Channel. Or so notes today's New York Times, which positions the Fox co-chairman's introductions somewhere on the viability spectrum between Rod Serling and Milton Berle:

Dear Reader: Please pay no attention to John Horn, who should be ashamed of himself today — not just for his facile collection of "lessons" studios have "learned" so far this summer, but for daring to suggest that The Happening was anything but a success for Fox and Manoj Night Shyamalan. The effrontery! Even the most casual of observers would know that Manoj's Mint has yielded more than $113 million worldwide in two weeks of release, which is more than fine for all parties involved. (Never mind the 66% drop during its second weekend — it's all profit for Manoj!) Then there's this silly matter of viewers rejecting darker-themed movies like War Inc. (John Cusack would beg to differ) and Horn's pedestrian observation that "Paramount is on fire." And anyway, that's not even accurate — Paramount has topped $1 billion for the year, and Universal is on fire. Christ, John — get it straight! [LAT]

At this rate Craigslist might want to consider a subcategory for "Studio J.O. Break" or some like-titled catch-all for furtive worktime leisure pursuits; Casual Encounters can't possibly contain the epidemic of solicitations that began yesterday on the Sony lot and continues today with an even more ambitious transmission from Fox [NSFW]:

All roads led to rapture for fanboys (and girls, we suppose) over the weekend at the LA Film Festival, where Sunday closed with a glimpse at scenes from the forthcoming X-Files: I Want to Believe. It seemed a busy enough couple of days elsewhere in Westwood, but it wasn't like there were shrieking throngs delivering signed thank-you cards to Diane English after a preview/discussion of her troubled updating of The Women, or a geek-to-seat ratio of 1:1 at the Melvin Van Peebles event on Saturday. This was the sort of a climactic bedlam most fests save for their closing nights, not the last screening on a sleepy Sunday.

Congratulations go out this morning to M. Night Shyamalan and his beleageured backers at 20th Century Fox, who weathered brutal buzz and worse reviews to nurse The Happening to an impressive $30.5 million opening. We've never been happier to underestimate a film's box-office juice — especially when Manoj's Folly needs all the support it can get before heading on the road. First stops: Mexico and Korea, where the film's marketing materials now include some of those countries' respective national landmarks among the decimated landscapes:

Antipathy toward Manoj Night Shyamalan was easy after Lady in the Water, but the slip-sliding trajectory of his upcoming eco-thriller The Happening has our hearts suddenly and surprisingly enlarged with pity. After a while, there's only so much you can hold against a guy whose actors' line readings are scarier than his plot, who unironically claims he's got something on The Exorcist and whose latest double-shot of bad buzz suggests Shyamalan's days as Genius Autocrat Brat are spiraling to a close. For starters, the flagging Manoj Mystique™ gets the point-counterpoint treatment in today's NY Times:

Everyone's favorite over-allusive Indiewood hit Juno is now available for download at the iTunes Music Store for $14.99. The move marks Fox's first foray into offering new DVD releases as paid downloads through Apple's popular service, with the studio joining Paramount and Disney. Amazon's Unbox already carried the title, where it's also available to rent. Apple TV owners won't be able to rent Juno until May 14.

Just confirmed at Macworld: all six major studios are onboard for iTunes movie rentals. That's Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal.Variety thought Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. were unlikely to sign on for "various competitive reasons." Maybe there's hope for the flailing Apple TV yet. Why? It's all you need to access the films. No computer required. (Photo by Boereck)

The Financial Times reports that Apple and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox film studio have signed a deal for digital movie rentals. Consumers will be able to rent the latest Fox DVD releases from iTunes for a limited time. The deal, which will likely be announced at Macworld in January, would likely be matched with an upgrade for the woebegotten Apple TV which has been de facto dead on arrival since it was released. It is suspected that Disney, which has extremely close ties with Apple — Steve Jobs is its largest shareholder after Mickey bought his Pixar animation studio — will be on board at launch as well.

Noah Kalina's video, "Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years," has been viewed 7,278,715 times on YouTube. Apparently that's the threshold loser-generated content must cross before warranting a Simpsons parody. Like the one below, which isn't just clever, but also an ironic test of fair use, the broad exemption in copyright law which allows for commentary and criticism.