WATCHMEN MOVIE RUMORS

From NEWSARAMA courtesy of Mike over at This is not a compliment:

ZACH SNYDER TO DIRECT WATCHMEN FOR WARNERS

It’s a story that clearly seems to be a challenge to adapt to film, but now, according to The Hollywood Reproter, that’s what director Zach Snyder’s job is, as the young director was named by Warner Bros. as the helmer of the movie version of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons classic graphic novel.

Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin are producing with Alex Tse writing a script based on the comic. According to the trade, Warner Bros. executives were impressed with Snyder’s handling of the adaptation for film of Frank Miller’s 300, and that landed him the job.

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Mike, the above mentioned blogger who dug up this little tidbit of info, is dubious of this: the project has been bouncing around Hollywood for over a decade, with Terry Gilliam slated to direct at one point, but nothing has ever come of it; furthermore, given the utterly sophisticated and nuanced story they're trying to trim into the standard Hollywood two-hour/three-act structure, it is very likely that any Watchmen film will just suck. The point is well taken. As for me, I've kind of gotten used to the cinema industry regularly mangling great comic books, and I'm pretty much of the opinion that a shitty Watchmen movie is better than none at all.

After all, every now and then, like with Hellboy for instance, they get it right. Maybe they'll pull it off this time.

But, you may ask, what is this Watchmen comic about which I speak so lovingly?

From Wikipedia:

Watchmen

Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Originally published by DC Comics as a monthly limited series from 1986 to 1987,[1] it was later republished as a trade paperback.[2] It was one of the first superhero comic books to present itself as serious literature, and it also popularized the more adult-oriented "graphic novel" format. Watchmen is the only graphic novel to have won a Hugo Award,[3] and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time magazine's list of "100 best novels from 1923 to present."[1]

Watchmen is set in 1985 in an alternative history United States where costumed adventurers are real and the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It tells the story of the last remaining superheroes and the events surrounding the mysterious murder of one of their own. In Watchmen, superheroes are presented as real people who must confront ethical and personal issues, who have neuroses and failings, and who are largely lacking in superpowers. Watchmen's deconstruction of the conventional superhero archetype, combined with its innovative adaptation of cinematic techniques and heavy use of symbolism and multi-layered dialogue, have had a profound effect on later comics.

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My buddy Jim once describe Watchmen as the greatest comic book ever produced, which is strange given that he hadn't read many comics when he made this assertion. But I think he may have gotten it right. Watchmen first appeared when I was seventeen, but I didn't get around to reading it until a couple of years later, in 1987. It was perfect for me at that point. I had been reading comics for as long as I could remember, but I was growing up, and much of what had delighted me only a few years earlier was at that point starting to get old and pedantic. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' complex and ambiguous treatment of the superhero concept was exactly what I needed to breathe some fresh air into my old romance with the medium. In short, because of the Watchmen series itself, and the influence that it had on the entire field, comics entered adulthood at around the same time I did. And that's what Watchmen is essentially: comics for adults, but not just any adults; it's for intelligent, questioning people who cannot be satisfied with the black and white philosophy of human existence offered by most popular entertainment. Watchmen is, without a doubt, true literature, timeless even, in that the issues it raises, but very consciously does not resolve, are just as pertinent today as they were twenty years ago. More so, perhaps.

Anyway, that probably explains in a nutshell why my buddy Mike is so worried that they won't get it right. But I can hope, can't I?



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