[Seeker_Of_Sins]

A consortium of entertainment industry companies is threatening to take legal action against the US Department of Defense for loss of earnings if promised wars against Syria and Iran are not waged within anticipated timeframes.

The consortium, led by Fox Studios, is angry that large investments in entertainment products already under development may be worthless if pre-emptive strikes do not take place before March.

Fox fears that planned blockbuster Walls of Damascus may prove to be a monumental flop if the invasion of Syria does not occur within the next couple of months. "I'm losing millions by the day here," says Fox chief executive Michael Harvey. "We've got everybody out on location, we've got sets, we've got crews. I've got Joel Schumacher hooked up for this one, I've got [Bruce] Willis. I tell you, if I have to pull the plug on this, somebody's going to pay."

In Walls of Damascus, Willis is scripted to play a maverick Marine Corps sergeant whose platoon is trapped behind enemy lines, but he defies orders to retreat and leads his men to confront and eventually destroy the entire Syrian army, defeating Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in a climactic fist fight at the end of the film.

There have already been scheduling concerns for Fox after it was forced to can high-tech special-effects thriller WMD: Taken Out during the Iraq war in favour of the more script-heavy Saving Private Jessica. "Yeah, we had to change the concept pretty quickly there," says Harvey. "But we ran with it. I'm a whole lot more worried about this situation, though. And right now, I'm blaming the Pentagon.

"We met with [Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul] Wolfowitz last spring and he was, like, 'Yeah, yeah, don't worry, Iraq will be like pissing in a pot. Then we'll take Syria, then we'll take Iran.' He even winked at us and said, 'You might be interested to know, there's a rogue East Asian state we've got our eye on.' We based our whole concept planning and timelines on what they assured us was going to go down.

"Now I'm hearing the invasion may not take place at all. Or something about how they want to reconstruct Iraq and establish democracy. Jesus, I can't make a movie of that. You think we can make a film about establishing democracy? You think Americans want to watch some shithole country getting reconstructed?"

Also participating in the class-action suit is computer game giant Take Two Interactive Software, maker of Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad (available for PlayStation 2 and Xbox). Product development manager James McNeish said the lack of new military operations in the Middle East was a major concern. "We were looking at the Syrian leg as the key in terms of product development," he explains. "To tell you the truth, Back to Baghdad hasn't been doing quite the numbers we hoped. Yeah, we've got some outstanding graphics, but there's a discerning audience out there, and they demand dynamism, multiple levels of combat.

"Now, we all know that the Iraq operation was a bit of a turkey shoot, which we've had to reflect in the game. So you're the commander of an M-43 Abrams tank with a 120mm gun and a top speed of 42mph, and what do you get to confront? Some more losers with rocket-propelled grenades. Bam. People tire of that.

"Syria is a whole different story, though. Good possibilities for full-spectrum combat scenarios. I mean, they've still got MiGs and shit, so we can work in dogfights. And our intelligence team tells us Syria's got mountains, which gives us way more variety for the landscapes. We've got people over there right now, going over the terrain. The prospects are, or should be, mouth-watering."

McNeish is also adamant that the Pentagon is to blame for the risk to his company's investment. "Too bad Rummy couldn't work with us on this one," he says. "Oh well, I guess we'll see them in court."

Privately, many industry representatives admit their greatest fear is that more rogue states might "do a Libya" and seek diplomatic rapprochement with the US before pre-emptive strikes can commence, thus limiting the options for new action-based entertainment. "I'd hate to think we'd have to go back to having Bill Pullman save the world from aliens," says one film industry executive.

Harvey says he spoke for the industry consortium as a whole when he scoffed at suggestions that his movie could go ahead as planned, whether or not an attack on Syria takes place. "Look, 99 percent of your average movie-going public has never even heard of Damascus," he says. "We need the saturation network and cable wartime news coverage to get sufficient product placement to make it work.

"And anyway, we can't make a movie about some kind of fictional event. That is so last century. Do you ever watch TV these days? People want to watch bombs going off and bad guys getting blown away, and know that that's exactly what actually happened in reality."