A couple days ago we linked to a couple of sites that seemed to be viral marketing sites for the WATCHMAN movie, Rorschach’s Journal and The Veidt Method. Well there is more to the story and here it is: it seems that both have been created by Michael Regina of TheOneRing.net as a kind of viral marketing campaign for him to be hired by WB to make the website for WATCHMEN, as he has done for the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, The DaVinci Code, and others.

This has not been met without controversy however. It seems that Regina tried but failed to get the gig doing the SUPERMAN site, and some think there’s some bad blood there. CHUD’s Drew Faraci also had some choice words for the effort:

And that’s certainly the case with the faux-Watchmen viral campaigns started by Mike Regina, a guy who previously attempted to force Warner Bros to make him the ‘official fan site’ of Superman Returns. Regina’s treading on thin, thin ice with his campaign, which links back to his marketing company and is obviously and blatantly an attempt to get hired by Warner Bros using copyrighted characters. There’s a line between writing ABOUT the Watchmen characters and writing AS the Watchmen characters, especially if you’re doing it for profit, as Regina demonstrably is. I have to wonder if the guy thought the legal implications of this one out all the way. At any rate, Regina’s campaign never can lead anywhere because he’s not affiliated with Warner Bros, so he won’t be revealing a character image or an important piece of info, since he’ll never get fed it by the studio. That viral campaign is a dead end street, and unless you have a lot of time on your hands, I can’t imagine why you would bother with it.

This didn’t sit too well with Regina, who wrote a scathing reply:

Perhaps between peddling such cinematic works of art like the new ‘Captivity’ film and selling out by adding pseudo porn ads seen on your site, you forgot that the internet has, and always will be, a free tool for anyone to use. I created the Watchmen sites to generate fan interest, much like I did with TheOneRing.net, and if the studios are interested, then all the better. Where do you get off assuming I am attempting to beg for recognition from Warner Bros. or (God forbid, since you seem to have that all covered) attempt to bring never-before seen news about the film.

ME-owch! When movie news/fansites cat fight! Anyway, the Watchmen sites are only fansites, but they are well done…we say enjoy one fan’s efforts.