Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

This makes more sense if Snyder is a sociopath.

The trailer has a shot of Dr. Manhattan fighting in Vietnam, also known as totally blowing away a scared little dude in one of those big-ass hats.

More from Entertainment Weekly, including this great picture:

http://io9.com/assets/images/gallery/8/2008/07/medium_2679557193_0d50e4d085_o.jpg

Choice quotes:

''In my movie, Superman doesn't care about humanity, Batman can't get it up, and the bad guy wants world peace,'' Snyder says with a smirk. ''Will Watchmen be the end of superhero movies? Probably not. But it sure will kick them in the gut.''

''The average movie audience has seen so many superhero movies,'' he says. ''And some of this stuff is hard to take seriously. I mean, The Hulk? Come on.'' Snyder remembers screening some Watchmen footage for an unnamed studio executive. Afterward, Snyder says, the exec turned to him and said, ''This makes Superman look stupid.''

In 2005, Greengrass was deep into preproduction on a present-day, war-on-terror-themed adaptation by David Hayter (X-Men), when a regime change at Paramount Pictures led to its demise. Enter Warner Bros., which acquired the rights in late 2005. Snyder was working on 300 for the studio at the time, and he was alarmed when he heard about the deal. After some soul-searching, his fear of seeing a bad Watchmen movie trumped his fear of trying to make a great one. ''They were going to do it anyway,'' he says. ''And that made me nervous.'' Over many months, and many meetings, Snyder persuaded Warner Bros. to abandon the Greengrass/Hayter script and hew as faithfully as possible to the comic. The key battles: retaining the '80s milieu, keeping Richard Nixon (Moore did consider using an era-appropriate Ronald Reagan, but worried it would alienate American readers), and preserving the villain-doesn't-pay-for-his-crimes climax.

Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) campaigned for the role of Rorschach — the comic's most popular character, despite his sociopathic, sadistic vigilantism — by recruiting 14 friends to help produce a video of himself performing sequences from the comic book. ''It was a little labor of love, man,'' he says. ''Kind of cheesy, but for an audition piece, it sufficed.''

Based on footage Snyder screened for EW, at least, the work seems to have been worth it. Multiple scenes — the Comedian's murder, Rorschach's introduction, Dr. Manhattan's origin, and a hypnotic title sequence that shutter-flies through the history of Watchmen America, set to Bob Dylan's ''The Times They Are A-Changin''' — suggest a film that may capture more of Watchmen than anyone thought possible. Sure, there have been changes. The catastrophic climax is different. Provocative bits, like a timely subplot about alternative fuels, have been added. And a pirate/horror comic book that was threaded ironically throughout the Moore/Gibbons narrative is set to become a separate animated DVD. But Snyder's film clearly seeks to emulate the comic's arch-yet-dramatic tenor, its time-shifting, perspective-switching storytelling, and its richly realized alterna-New York. The Gunga Diner, the ''Who Watches the Watchmen?'' graffiti, the blood-splashed smiley-face button evoking a doomsday clock — it's all there.

Now comes the hard part: keeping it there. Snyder's current three-hour cut won't be unspooling in theaters next March. Robinov says two hours and 25 minutes is more realistic. ''Running time is dictated by how you are engaged,'' Robinov says. The studio might be gutsy enough to back Watchmen, but it wants to make a profit too. ''The challenge is to make a movie that can satisfy the fan but engage the typical moviegoer,'' he says. ''I think that's how Zack feels too.''

(Anyway, I always thought "conversion" on Mars felt a bit too easy and quick.)

totally agree - it happens in the space of a few panels and his explanation is basically "gosh I had never thought of the statistical improbability of people before"

Kinda parallels the conversion of the psychiatrist - "gosh I had never thought that basically people=shit before"

everything has already happened so it doesn't matter how quickly manhattan changes his mind, or something

BUBASTIS, FORGIVE ME

wonder if they are they keeping the genetically engineered cat thing?

None of the shit on Forks' list was owned by Eclipse. Hamsters are back already, so talk about that instead of wishing they'd come back. Cynicalman has been reprinted since, so talk about that instead of wishing for it to be reprinted. Mr Monster has been heavily reprinted and had shitloads of new issues since, talk about that instead of wishing for it to come back and be reprinted. Reid Fleming has been back since and been reprinted by the creator, talk about that instead of wishing for McFarlane to steal the rights from Boswell. Beanworld's on the way back right now and has also seen new episodes since, talk about those instead of wishing Todd had robbed his highest-level executive of his only creative property. Zot had three reprint books and you didn't buy them, why say you would have if someone had done them without the permission or involvement of the creator?

(Also book 4 is not out now and never will be, he's done issue #s 11-18 and 21-36 as one new volume instead.)

And David Boswell always wanted James Gandolfini for the Reid Fleming movie but it fell apart when the Sopranos took off.

Aaand I wish that Watchmen had never been made into a movie, but don't understand why other people who feel the same way are saying they're keen to give money to it and cross their fingers! Snyder's been a complete cock about the author's wishes, anything he says about fidelity to the work is pretty much pointless.

Whoa, holdup, Cynicalman is now being mentioned on ILX? Excellent.

Matt Feazell is a great guy, and one of the pleasures of living in S.E. Michigan for all those years was running into him here & there. I think I still have several minicomics and a collected TPB that he autographed for me.

Also, Malin Akerman is crazy hott in the trailer

Reid Fleming has been back since and been reprinted by the creator, talk about that instead of wishing for McFarlane to steal the rights from Boswell. ..Zot had three reprint books and you didn't buy them, why say you would have if someone had done them without the permission or involvement of the creator?

wtf are you talking about, nobody said or wished for any such things.

Dueds this trailer/stills/etc make me think the movie will be 1000x better than my imaginings of what a Watchmen movie would be. So I'm pretty stoked. I mean it is a movie, give it a bit of a fucking break.

Also, maybe it's bcz I've only read it 2x, but I had to even look up why the crap that Black Freighter stuff was in there in the first place. And even then, I was like, "oh, I see the point, but it sure kind of killed the rhythm/thrills." IMO, natch. So I suppose T.S. Eliot and Scott McCloud are mourning my loutish inability to piece it all together in one go, but srsly, I think it is the kind of thing that would alienate a movie audience. And there's the animated DVD, so I think it's all rather silly to pick at.

I wonder what everyone here would say about a SANDMANG movie.

Okay guys, I am making SANDMANG movie and I'm only including the Kindly Ones plot. And Dream is going to have pointy nipples. Asassinate me!

Also Daniel is going to be voiced by Gilbert Godfried.

I could keep going.

"wtf are you talking about, nobody said or wished for any such things."

40 grand for all of eclipse's creative rights sounds like a total fucking steal; I'm astonished that idiot hasn't done something profitable with it.

licenses that could easily be made profitable again with a bit of effort:

(give it to kyle baker or phil foglio or ty templeton or...

(another one that I'd buy in two or three reprint books)

If McFarlane had bought the rights for these "licenses" he'd have been "making them profitable" without the involvement or approval of the creators, based on 100% of the cases in which he did attempt to make Eclipse licenses profitable, wtf are YOU talking about?

So the friends that I saw Dark Knight with this weekend, none of whom have read the graphic novel*, were really, really excited by the trailer for this. Make of that what you will.

* - I will be rectifying this ASAP

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/07/comic-based-mov.html

Rundown of upcoming licensed comix movies.

Scott Pilgrim? Really?

If McFarlane had bought the rights for these "licenses" he'd have been "making them profitable" without the involvement or approval of the creators, based on 100% of the cases in which he did attempt to make Eclipse licenses profitable, wtf are YOU talking about?

Relax. First of all, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if MFarlane bought the rights to their creative licenses that he bought the rights to the characters they published. I'm not really up on where Eclipse stood with writer's/artists ownership and I have a glancing wiki knowledge of what he might have "bought". My supposition was (and remains) that there are characters on that list ripe for a comeback and especially ready for film adaptation and that if MFarlane has the rights to do so and is choosing not to, he's a schmuck. Which I assume to be true. I was waiting for someone to chime in to let me know if this stuff is still creator held. Again, what the heck did he buy, then?

I had no idea Hamsters was back; I'd still love to see Templeton/Foglio/Baker on them, but I have no particular irony/nostalgia iron in the fire to follow up on that. I've seen Cynicalman and Mr. Monster work post Eclipse and have purchased; wasn't sure if the terms of the deal could've included them using their own properties or if they bought back rights or never gave them up in the first place. I actually just bought the Zot b+w reprint book on Friday. I wasn't aware that McCloud had been reissuing this stuff.

I'm plenty pro-creator rights; if you took my comments as crossed fingers that artists get their material taken away from them and screwed, that wasn't my intention. I'm hardly an industry wonk; I'm a comic reader. I'm just thinking out loud about what happened to the properties and musing about the odd climate wherein a Zot movie actually sounds hot in 2011.

That Gandolfini tidbit is interesting; I'm watching the Sopranos front to back right now, so he's very on my mind. He'd be a good dairy product interlocutor.

David Banner to voice Destiny in the Sandmang epic.

Also, what we need to be talking about is how bad the Spirit looks, not the Watchmen.

what we need to be talking about is how bad the Spirit looks

QFT. Though Samuel Jackson as a Nazi general is something else.

also

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/080716/Comic-Con/scarlett-johansson_spirit_l.jpg

Is she supposed to be Satin or Silk or P'Gell or...?

Silken Floss.

Should point out this is Frank Miller's idea of who Silken Floss is (a sexy secretary) instead of Eisner's (a nuclear physicist).

yeah Spirit movie seems wrong on many levels

http://www.empireonline.com/images/trailer/breakdown/watchmen/8.jpg

fuzzy dong

...lop

That is how ladies like them.

s'all love forks, this thread just needed more hyperbolic posturing to keep the tone up.

just that the McFarlane/Eclipse story is FOURTEEN-YEAR OLD NEWS at this point and has been maaad hashed out in press, speculation, and a LOT in court. basically what he bought was a) the trademarked magazine titles Alien Worlds and Terror Tales and such, and b) fuck all else. He plainly had no idea what he was buying except that he hoped Miracleman would be involved; at one point in legal posturings his people claimed that they hadn't even got all the Miracleman film in the deal and what they had was too damaged to use - Neil Gaiman read this, went into his basement and opened the boxes they'd sent him and discovered almost all the series in completely usable shape.

(once he realised he didn't own shit, he spent yeeears bartering with Gaiman to exchange the IMAGINARY rights he'd not really bought for the genuine contractual rights Gaiman had in Spawn characters. when a court finally said "cut it out you dipshit, pay the man," he declared bankruptcy and carried on doing business as before without paying up.)

The Spirit movie is so wrong there's nothing at all to say about it, except to weep that such a long-standing respectable creator-defending publisher as Denis Kitchen should end up spending the entire second half of his life actively fucking up the legacy of his two deceased clients.

Scott Pilgrim? Really?

"Edgar Wright's making a Scott Pilgrim movie" was announced a couple of years ago, I think - around the time book 3 was published.

The eclipse story is news to me; I woulda been in college and somewhat unplugged from comics gossip at the time. So bear with me: "they hadn't even got all the Miracleman film in the deal and what they had was too damaged to use - Neil Gaiman read this, went into his basement and opened the boxes they'd sent him and discovered almost all the series in completely usable shape." <-- This suggests that there was film in the can on this project? What became of it?

As far as the Spirit goes, as much as it offends me, my inclination is to think Eisner would've been distraught by the outcome of the character. He was a businessman in much the same way Ray Charles was; I think he'd be happy to know his character would become a tentpole movie regardless of the dumbassedness of the final cut. Then again, I never read the Eisner and Miller interview book, so I'm not sure if they saw eye to eye. In the long run, it'll likely attract new fans to the archives and to Eisner's real legacy which can only be a good thing. Fuck if I plan on seeing it tho'.

sorry, "would NOT have been distraught by the outcome of the character"

enjoying all this watchmen talk

thot the preview looked great

This suggests that there was film in the can on this project? What became of it?

It's still in Gaiman's basement (or possibly a safe archival facility now), as the rights are still a clusterfuck. Film = printer's negatives.

so I'm not sure if they saw eye to eye

ha ha, no.

Y'all saw the Sally Jupiter WWII bomber/pin-up art, right?

Ï remember Gaiman mentioning in some intervíew back in the 90's that he was gonna do a movie based on Death: The High Cost of Living, I wonder what happened to that? I always liked that comic, and it's self-contained enough for a proper movie adaptation.

That's still on, Guillermo Del Toro is producing.

what pie does that man not have a finger in these days

gordo, are you on some access hollywood type shiz or are you industry?

to tie in with the film ... Watchmen the game?!?! http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3168969

I bet the 'destroy your therapist's faith in human nature' level is going to KICK ASS!

roflz

How about the 'sit and read a fucking comic book by a newsstand while the world dies round you' sidequest?

or hot "unable to get it up sex sequence" in Nite Owl's apartment

That can be beaten with the 'rubber suit fetish' power-up.

would love Watchmen game in the style of 1985