Variety is reporting that Fox and Marvel Enterprises have filed suit against Sony Pictures and Revolution Studios alleging that Sony's Zoom, which is based on Jason Lethcoe's Zoom's Academy for the Super Gifted, is confusingly similar to the X-Men franchise citing common elements such as 'teenage mutant superheroes, an underground training facility and a sinister government program.'  Interestingly enough the Fox/Marvel complaint states that Lethcoe's graphic novel does not infringe on the X-Men copyright, blaming instead changes made by the Zoom scriptwriters.  Zoom (see 'Zoom's Academy Movie Greenlit'), which stars Tim Allen, who starred in the Star Trek parody, Galaxy Quest, Chevy Chase and Courteney Cox, is a comedy that tweaks the superhero genre and has not yet gone into production.

Two elements make this a very interesting case.  One is that it flies in the face of the general reluctance of Hollywood studios to sue each other, though as Variety astutely points out, 'lawsuits involving Marvel are not (unusual).' And the second is the fact that Sony's announced release date for Zoom, May 12, 2006 just two weeks before the third X-Men film is scheduled to premier, has become a major issue.  Fox and Marvel have taken exception to Sony's attempt at guerilla marketing -- using Fox's major marketing campaign for X3 to the benefit of Zoom, which was originally scheduled for August 2006, but moved up to May after Fox announced its debut date for X3 -- and have made the Zoom scheduling change a major part of their case.  In fact it may be the key to a settlement, since according to Variety, 'Fox and Marvel would likely be satisfied with a new release date and moderate script changes.' 

The announcements of release dates amount to the staking out of prime territory by the studios, which employ all kinds of stratagems to get the best temporal real estate for their movies.  The lawsuit by Fox and Marvel amounts to an escalation of these turf wars.  While Sony could probably win the legal case based on 'fair use' of superhero clich?s for the purpose of parody, does the studio really want to spend the time and money defending itself when it could just as easily move the debut of Zoom back to its original August date?