Calvin Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Cinescape is reporting that Sigourney Weaver is in the running to play the older Silk Spectre. Actor Daniel Craig (Tomb Raider,Road To Perdition) is rumored to play Rorschach. With the rumor a couple of months back of John Cusack being interested in playing The Nite Owl, maybe this film will finally see the light of day. Alan Moore's Watchmen is to many the definitive comic book story. If you are even a casual comics fan (or reading in general) this story is a must read. Here's hoping that this happens... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark E Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 And here's hoping it doesn't. This comic would be bastardized in ways we haven't even dreampt of yet. I admit to not having read the Watchmen, but the last time Alan Moore was adapted to the big screen we had the dreck of LXG to put up with versus the smartly done League comics. Hollywood is all about fixing things that aren't broken so it will sell to the masses. A comic book story done in a mature way to appeal to adults is not going to happen, in my opinion. So I'd prefer that the comic stay a comic, but that's just my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DataScion Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 My whole hearted agreement. I am a lifelong comic fan (in fact my sig icon is Exeter from Crossgen's "Scion"), and I must concur that Watchmen is among the greatest examples of the genre. Here's hoping this all goes through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherbz Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 I'd have to agree with Pharmboy. There's an essay by Terry Gilliam in a book about Alan Moore where he was approached to make a Watchmen movie, and eventually decided it would not work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chatakinns Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 After the fiasco of the F4 movie, and the decline of the quality ( IMHO ) of the Batman movies, comic book fans were terrified of how X-Men and Spiderman would turn out. Granted, LXG was kind of rough ( I am trying to be nice ). But the high quality of X-Men and Spiderman should be used as examples of how comic book movies should be made. If they could follow in the footsteps of the filmakers of these 2 movies, and stay true to the books of The Watchmen they would make great movies of this series. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Originally posted by AuntieMuffin@Feb 6 2004, 10:09 AM If they could follow in the footsteps of the filmakers of these 2 movies, and stay true to the books of The Watchmen they would make great movies of this series. I think the concern is that those two examples come from source material that arguably lack the nuance and complexity of Watchmen. At least that's my concern. -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chatakinns Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 True Monkey. But looking at the movies being put out lately, LOtR, Two Towers, and ROtK, movies of great scope and vision CAN be made, and be made with high standards others have to reach to meet. Now, I don't think that The Watchmen would really compare well to " The Trilogy ". But, my point is, we as fans should be the ones to demand the movie industy meet our standards. It is the same as games. If they put out crap, and we snatch it up like pieces of gold, then they know we will settle for crap and keep making it. There will always be crap make and released. In a perfect world everything would be exactly as we wanted it to be made. And even then, there would still be people who were unsatisfied with the finished product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnthonyVolpe Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 After seeing the cinematic abortion known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I've decided The Watchmen will receive a similar coat-hanger job in the movies. The only comic book movie I'm looking forward to right now is Hellboy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chatakinns Posted February 9, 2004 Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Originally posted by AnthonyVolpe@Feb 6 2004, 10:46 AM After seeing the cinematic abortion known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I've decided The Watchmen will receive a similar coat-hanger job in the movies. The only comic book movie I'm looking forward to right now is Hellboy. But, is that not like letting a few bad apples spoil the entire bunch ? It can be done and done well. It seems like the best comic book movies that were made so far, were done by people who really liked the comic books themselves. I would hope that if someone were interested in making a movie of this scope, they would do it with respect and love of the characters and storylines from the books. My all time favorite line of a movie is still Michael Keaton saying " I'm Batman. " And to me he will always be the best Batman. And my 2nd fav is " Where does he get those wonderful toys ?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainl Posted February 9, 2004 Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Batman worked very well because it captured the atmosphere of Miller's version of the Dark Knight without actually taking a specific story to misinterpret. Lord Of The Rings was well adapted because they stuck reasonably well to a damn good yarn and polished it with care. My fear about Watchmen is that it isn't just a good narrative, or a funky atmosphere. Its a comic about comics; an almost post-modern reflection on the genre and its conventions, and so vitally steeped in its original medium. Adapting it for the screen will by definition lose all that, and would be as much poorer for the conversion as a novelisation of Adaptation, or a comic version of The Day Today would be. Actually, The Day Today is particularly relevant here. Originally the radio show On The Hour, its move to TV required a move of references too; I see any 'proper' adaptation of Watchmen having to shift from Comic Book architypes to, say filmic action heroes. But that makes it a different thing again, perhaps a more intelligent version of The Last Action Hero. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Sheets Posted February 9, 2004 Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Originally posted by iainl@Feb 9 2004, 11:10 AM My fear about Watchmen is that it isn't just a good narrative, or a funky atmosphere. Its a comic about comics; an almost post-modern reflection on the genre and its conventions, and so vitally steeped in its original medium. Adapting it for the screen will by definition lose all that, and would be as much poorer for the conversion as a novelisation of Adaptation, or a comic version of The Day Today would be. Yeah, I think that's a really important point, although I would say that it's really more about superheroes than comics (Watchmen has little relevance to Robert Crumb's work, for instance). I think many of the points that Watchmen makes about the superhero genre might be carried over to a film since superhero films seem to be finally taking off as a genre, although even then many of those movies, in order to translate the material, often make concessions to "reality" that comics at the time that Watchmen came out rarely did. But it's absolutely true that most of what makes Watchmen special is the way that Moore and Gibbons really pushed the medium as far as they knew how. They weren't just telling their story; they were trying to do things with page composition that no one had ever done before and to try and bring that across to a film (or even a tv miniseries)...it's like asking a director to do a new Citizen Kane. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angry the Clown Posted June 7, 2005 Report Share Posted June 7, 2005 Paramount have just gone and ditched the project altogether not long after Watchmen became one in a long line of big films pulling the plug on shooting at UK based studios due to costs. They stuck with it for a short time, lowering the budget and looking to take the shoot to mainland Europe but as of now the producers, along with Paul Greengrass, are left trying to pitch it to other American studios. Daniel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dienekes96 Posted June 7, 2005 Report Share Posted June 7, 2005 Never saw the thread until today Was excited at the names (Cusack is perfect now). But Paramount dumped it. Not sure how to feel, as I'd rather no film than a bad one. But Greengrass seemed to get it, so I had hope we'd get a decent one. I don't see anyone in the States ballsy enough to take this for a spin. It's only a worthwhile story is you take the whole thing on thematically. Oh well, Chuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainRon Posted June 7, 2005 Report Share Posted June 7, 2005 hopefully someone else picks it up and does it proper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandondragons Posted June 8, 2005 Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 I would think if Batman and FF4 do well someone will pick it up in a hurry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted October 15, 2005 Report Share Posted October 15, 2005 Why don't they turn this into an HBO mini-series, preserving the episodic nature of the source material? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angry the Clown Posted June 6, 2006 Report Share Posted June 6, 2006 Curiously, Watchmen might be back on. I was having a read of composer John Powell's MySpace blog this morning and in his 3rd of June entry he notes that Watchmen is one of the projects he is currently working on. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=67085351&MyToken=e39168d1-d846-485d-a7ed-c7bdfd0f637aML Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angry the Clown Posted June 6, 2006 Report Share Posted June 6, 2006 False alarm. Alan Moore need not have a heart attack at the thought of another film based on his works as The Watchmen movie can still be assumed dead since it turns out that the Powell myspace blog is in fact run without his consent by some eerily obsessive fan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon W H Posted June 7, 2006 Report Share Posted June 7, 2006 So his fan thought it would be a good joke or something to start that rumor? Yeesh. Get my hopes up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisBardon Posted June 7, 2006 Report Share Posted June 7, 2006 False alarm. Alan Moore need not have a heart attack at the thought of another film based on his works Good. They've already ruined enough of his work, let's at least leave Watchmen alone. Besides, any adaptation of Watchmen that changed the ending (as all of them were supposed to) would have just ruined the story. Alan Moore is the only man I can think of who quit comics to become a full time wizard... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon W H Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Er, what? I knew he wrote a storyline about magic, but did he really quit to do, uh, that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogbert Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Alan Moore has been interested in "magick" & the Occult for a long, long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisBardon Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Er, what? I knew he wrote a storyline about magic, but did he really quit to do, uh, that? From all accounts, yes. He came back to wrap up the last of the ABC line with a Tom Strong finale, and there was that 49ers OGN, but it appears that's it. You're probably thinking of Promethea though, which is probably the most obviously magic/occult influenced book he's done. The Kaballah arc is probably one of the most densey written things in comics. I've been meaning to go back and re-read the whole series sometime when I have a spare weekend-I read it the first time around as it came out, and it's one of those series that looks like it'd read better in one short pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Sheets Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 From all accounts, yes. He came back to wrap up the last of the ABC line with a Tom Strong finale, and there was that 49ers OGN, but it appears that's it. Well, he qualified his retirement announcement by saying it doesn't apply to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, because he still owns that one, and he's currently hyping up Lost Girls, his porn comic that he's finally going to get around to finishing soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisBardon Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Lost Girls, his porn comic that he's finally going to get around to finishing soon Yeah, I saw the solicit for it in this month's previews. He's been working on this forever though, so I'm not sure if that counts. Seems that it's only being released as a limited edition slipcase HC at this point (75 bucks). I do remember rumblings about a second league book set around the turn of the century, but I thought that project was dead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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