[PELÍCULAS] Watchmen - The Movie

Exclusive: Which Studio Is Watching Watchmen?
Back from the dead and looking for new blood.
by Stax

December 16, 2005 - IGN FilmForce has confirmed that the long-in-development feature film version of Watchmen is not quite as dead as fans feared after Paramount put it into turnaround last summer, just months before it was slated to film.

Good news first. Producers Lloyd Levin and Larry Gordon have officially set up Watchmen at Warner Bros. (Entertainment Weekly reported a few months back that Gordon and Levin were in talks with Warners.) This studio makes sense as it belongs to the Time Warner empire, as does Watchmen's comic book publisher, DC Comics. Warners has revitalized the comic book movie genre with its gritty, A-list Batman Begins and looks to stay the course with next year's Superman Returns and V for Vendetta.

Like Vendetta, Watchmen is based on a work by lauded comics scribe Alan Moore. With the buzz beginning to turn positive for Vendetta, Warners is understood to want to have another Moore property on-hand should Vendetta prove a success.

Now for the not so good news. Politically charged filmmaker Paul Greengrass no longer appears attached to direct Watchmen, which is a shame considering how well he understood and respected the material. Furthermore, David Hayter's script also appears to have been set aside; Watchmen is now considered an open writing assigment, which means the development process begins anew. Hayter's screenplay adaptation was widely praised online (including by myself) for its fidelity to the complex source material.

IGN FilmForce contacted Mr. Hayter, who was surprisingly candid about these recent developments. "I believe that Paul's schedule dictated that he move on after Paramount was unable to meet their commitment to make the film on the previously set timetable, though I am not certain whether Warners still has Paul in mind for a later date, or if they are just starting again with a new director.

"As for the script going up as an open writing assignment, I have not heard that definitively, but it wouldn't particularly surprise me," Hayter advised IGN. "I would, of course, be disappointed, and do not personally feel that this is a necessary step, as the screenplay is pretty perfect as it is. However, the same concerns raised at other studios have been raised at the WB (i.e., too complex, too dark, too many characters) and after five years of work on this project, I am no longer willing to continue messing with material that I have meticulously developed for the past half a decade just to please another timid studio. I believe that Watchmen must be embraced wholly for what it is – a complex, hyper-intelligent epic – rather than turned into something simpler for studio comfort. In the latter case, it should not be made at all.

"If another writer wants to undertake that route, then I wish them the best, and fervently hope the film is not ruined as a result. As a fan, I did not revive interest in this project only to see it go the way of Daredevil. That said, I know that both Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin's integrity and belief in this project is solid, and I wish them all the success in the world."

Ultimately, said Hayter, "Nobody wants to see Watchmen done right more than myself."

Según anuncia Newsarama los derechos para hacer una película basada en el Watchmen de Alan Moore y Dave Gibbons han pasado a manos de Warner Bros..

Habrá que esperar a ver si en esta ocasión la película llega a buen puerto, después de que en los últimos años el proyecto se haya emprendido y paralizado al cabo de un tiempo en distintas ocasiones. En 2004 parecía que la película por fin llegaría a rodarse al anunciarse que Darren Aronofsky (Pi) iba a ser su director. Sin embargo meses después Aronofsky abandonó el proyecto, siendo Paul Greengrass el nuevo director contratado. La película llegó a entrar en fase de pre-producción e incluso se abrió la página web oficial del film... poco antes de que Paramount cancelara definitivamente el proyecto.

Según informa The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. ya está buscando un guionista y un director para la película. El mismo estudio estrenará el 17 de marzo de 2007 la película basada en otra de las grandes obras de Moore, V de Vendetta, y es de suponer que si ésta tiene éxito sirva para impulsar definitivamente el film basado en Watchmen. Claro que si la película es un fracaso, tal vez el proyecto de Watchmen vuelva a ser aparcado de nuevo...

ZACK SNYDER TO DIRECT WATCHMEN




Zack Snyder, who co-wrote and directed the upcoming 300 movie from Warner Bros., has come aboard to develop and direct Watchmen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Alex Tse is writing the script, and Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin are producing.

The Watchmen property -- based on the comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons -- has been though development hell, with three different studios and such filmmakers as Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass and screenwriter David Hayter involved.

Snyder's 300, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, was shot in Montreal, using partial sets and green screens. It is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite against their Persian enemy, drawing a line in the sand for democracy.
300 will reach theaters in 2007.

Fuente: http://www.comicscontinuum.com/

ADAM HUGHES TO DESIGN COSTUMES FOR THE WATCHMEN MOVIE



Add one more name to the list of comic industry luminaries attached to the upcoming film version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen - Adam Hughes.

Though rumors were circling earlier this week, the artist has confirmed for Newsarama that he will be designing the costumes for the film version of the seminal comic work, to be directed by Zack Snyder.

In an age when there’s a tremendous amount of crossover between comics and Hollywood, his work on Watchmen (“Assuming they like what I sketch,” Hughes joked), this will be his first movie gig.

So how did Snyder and the film producers find him?

“I’d like to say that my work spoke for itself, and my draftsmanship and Dave Gibbons-lie clean lines just called to them…or something…but I really have no idea,” Hughes said with a chuckle. “Maybe the movie guys walked through a comic shop looking for somebody - anybody to design their costumes, and some boobs called out to them from the rack. That’s a pun, by the way…

“But seriously – I have no idea. Maybe they just liked my stuff. Zack Snyder is working on 300 [based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller], so obviously he reads the occasional comic or two, one could deduce; but all in all, they got in touch with us, and it was all very causal.”

While the story - the words of Watchmen - is virtual scripture in the world of comics, in the eyes of many fans, so are the costumes. So just what will Hughes be designing, or doing, even?

“When you get on the other side of the fence, you sort of understand that there are certain things that wouldn’t survive a direct translation from comic to screen,” Hughes explained. “Superman and Spider-Man look virtually identical to their comic book counterparts. Batman doesn’t, but yet he still has Batman’s silhouette, and that seems to be enough for most people. But continuing, the X-Men hardly resemble themselves at all – but they still work.

“In doing something like this, I find that I end up thinking about two completely different groups within the movie’s audience at the same time: the die-hard comic book fans who will not permit even an iota of alteration; and then you’ve got your non-comics readers who will be turned off the minute somebody walks out in a leotard. You have to come up with something that allures and entices them and their debit cards and their dollars without being so radical that it turns off the die-hard fan. It’s actually pretty hard work.”

In short, Hughes isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel, or throw out Gibbons’ designs. What he is trying to do is take the original costumes, and make them…easier to swallow as something you'd see - and believe - on screen.



“In a comic book, because it’s all graphic abstraction, it’s easier to accept something that’s completely insane,” Hughes said. “But in a movie, you can make stuff that’s slightly insane – something that, if you saw someone walking down the street in it, you’d think, ‘No,’ but there’s something about the context of a movie that allows the slightly bizarre to become acceptable, just like where comics allow the amazingly bizarre to become acceptable. So now it’s a matter of, ‘Okay, how do we take the Silk Spectre from the amazingly bizarre to the slightly bizarre?’ After all, she wears an outfit that you could pull right out of Victoria’s Secret…”

Hughes is keeping mum on who exactly he’s been asked to sketch – although, as one might be able to guess, he was working on design elements of the Silk Spectre while speaking with Newsarama. “I haven’t been asked to do sketches of all the Watchmen, just a few of them,” Hughes said. “I think, the message at least I’m taking from that is that with some of them, there’s nothing that needs to be tweaked for the 21st century.

“But yeah – the ones that you can imagine might need some help to make them a little easier to swallow…the ones that you look at and think… ‘Uh…yeah.’ Those are the ones.”

And is he working on Dr. Manhattan designs?

“There’s only so much you can do with a blue ____,” Hughes deadpanned.

At the very least, Hughes said, the job with the movie allows him the opportunity to re-read Watchmen, and also – he’s found an invaluable reference. “One of the things that’s really helping is having the big hardcover Graphitti Designs Watchmen edition from…however many decades ago,” Hughes said. “It’s the same as the Absolute Edition, but it’s comic-sized.

“It’s got Alan Moore’s notes to Dave Gibbons in it, and he talks to Dave about the concept of the character, which helps in getting me thinking a little more about not what they’d be wearing, but why they’d be wearing it.”

And finally, as for how his movie work will affect his regular workload, Hughes said that he’s got a pretty good rotation thing going.

“I do a little writing on All-Star Wonder Woman, and when my typing fingers get tired, I move over to the drawing table and do a little more on Silk Spectre and try to make her work as well as some other sketches, and oh yeah, crap – I’ve got a Catwoman cover due. It’s a little schizophrenic right now, but fun.”