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As I re-read the Watchmen again, still brilliant! So film version, hope it still to the book, hear it got unknown casts, that make it better! :)

a worthy film adaptation would need a film at least 5 hours long, in my opinion?!

'cos i rate the book so highly, i really think a film version is needed.

Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Absolute-Watchmen-Alan-Moore/dp/1845761685

"'cos i rate the book so highly, i really think a film version is needed."

Isn't that an oxymoron - shurley shome mishtake?

I love Watchmen, but it doesn't seem to need to be filmed.
  Very few books do. 'Tiger, Tiger/The Stars My Destination' by Alfred Bester was one (there was a bloody awful 'graphic novel' of it later on) and some of Ennis' stuff has had me thinking "this would be great in a film" although the movie of The Punsiher had me thinking "oh no it wouldn't"

I'm ignoring this thread on Doctor's advice, but feel the need to let everyone know that I'm still strongly disapproving of the whole notion.  

++ "'cos i rate the book so highly, i really think a film version is needed."

Isn't that an oxymoron - shurley shome mishtake? ++

I think a serialised radio dramatisation might work.

radio series??? Please no!!! I am Deaf! :(

The only other format that could possibly work would be for R Kelly to do a watchmen concept album

"Not only was there a red-headed vigilante in the fridge... but he was a midget! (midget) (midget)".

Now THAT I would like to see.

Link: Watchmen News

have they started talks again about a film or is this just an extension of last years negotiations and if it does go ahead i can almost guarantee alan moore wont like it..

"Thereâ??s no room for hearing the thoughts of the characters. If you recall the comic, thereâ??s an entire issue which has Dr. Manhattan in contemplation on Mars; thatâ??s been dropped and the only bit that remains is showing us how he ceased being a human being and became something more."


Which is, of course, only the best bit* in the entire series...





*IMHO

Edited notes from Umpire magazine:

"filming set to begin in September ... insisted the movie be R-rated ... a cast of unknowns ... Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons on board ... could be good enough [for Moore]"

And:

Dr. Manhatten - Billy Crudup
Silk Spectre - Malin Akerman
Ozymandias - Matthew Goode
Nite Owl - Patrick Wilson
Rorschach - Jackie Earle Haley
The Comedian - Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Actually, with his first film in 1996, and a full resume from then till now, it must be a bit of a shitter if Billy Crudup reads an article that refers to him as an "unknown".

Jackie Earle Haley got a best supporting actor Oscar nomination last year for 'Little Children' where he was great playing the local child botherer. Patrick Wilson was in that too. Billy Crudup was great in 'Almost Famous' and had a decent role in the last Mission Impossible. 'Unknowns' only if your sphere of reference is limited to Heat magazine.

That screenplay makes me feel ill.  As does this line:

"That said, everyone wants to see a good Watchmen movie get made."  

Bollocks to that, squire.

Why would you not want a good Watchmen movie??

I'd love it to be good, I'd love every movie it see to be good but unfortunately things often don't work out that way, which I think will be the case with the Watchmen.

Heres the thing I dont get - they cant make the technology that more advanced (no genetic lynx or airships for example), because the audience wouldnt get it?  Whats to get - when you read the comic and see airships and genetic lynx, you dont go "there arent any genetic lynx!" for the same reason you dont go "there arent giant blue men!" - Its surely not a difficult concept to grasp?  

If you estimate your audiences intelligence wont grasp something that simple, then surely you might as well not bother trying to do anything more challenging than the Fantastic Four?

Why would you not want a good Watchmen movie??

Because I don't want a Watchmen movie at all - because Watchmen is a comic, and I completely reject the presumption that it for some reason MUST be made into a movie.  I know, I know, I sound like a broken record.  The story is quite clichéd, the setting is by now old hat (and apparently being ditched anyway), the characters are mainly okay if retty crude caricatures, but the COMIC is brilliant almost beyond compare.  

I just don't see the point.  I've never felt a need to see a book or play 'translated' to film - maybe a paticular story would make a good film, but that's a different matter.  I don't see Watchmen's story (which can be fully summed up in two lines) as being what is good about the comic - it's the craft, the density, the execution, the sheer artistry of the comic that makes it one of my favourite reading experiences.  

Film is a completely different medium, and again I say:  Watchmen is only good because it's a comic.

Blue-skinned supermen saving the Twin Towers I could take or leave.

 Aaaargh, italics OFF.

::"If you estimate your audiences intelligence wont grasp something that simple"

Aye.  I was reading some stuff by Bill Hicks - some letters he'd written after having his tenth slot censored completely from Letterman.  Various excuses were given, mostly contradictory, but one was that there was a fear that the audience wouldn't get it.

Hicks retorted that he played to audiences all the time, and they did get it - and the studio audience got it - and that he was the audience, because we're all human.  He then segued into a common phrase that he experienced a lot in showbiz: "will they get it in the mid-west?"

This gets him ranting about how the mid-west is essentially everything inbetween the east and west coasts - so most of the USA.  And what did the program makers (or film makers) assume lived out there that was so thick it couldn't grasp basic plot?

And, clearly, that sort of thinking still prevails.

everything inbetween the east and west coasts

A radioactive hell inhabited by muties, former presidents, cannibal tribes and escaped dinosaurs, as I recall.  And then there's the Death Belt - that's got to have an effect on TV reception, so maybe when producers ask "will they get it", they mean it literally.

Because I don't want a Watchmen movie at all - because Watchmen is a comic, and I completely reject the presumption that it for some reason MUST be made into a movie. I know, I know, I sound like a broken record. The story is quite clichéd, the setting is by now old hat (and apparently being ditched anyway), the characters are mainly okay if retty crude caricatures, but the COMIC is brilliant almost beyond compare.

Here's a tip...

Don't watch it.

That's what I do with every Patrick Swasie, Jean Claud Van Damm or (insert shit actor/actress/concept here) film ever released.

Just pretend it doesn't exist.

Problem solved.

Just pretend it doesn't exist.

I don't really have any deliberate intention of watching a Watchmen movie, but I reckon I'll have trouble avoiding trailers/coverage, and I imagine I'll end up seeing it at some point, but as a Star Wars fan I'm very good at pretending things don't exist, so you're right, it doesn't matter.  

I'm certainly not saying that no-one else should watch/enjoy it,  I'm just saying that I don't see the point, and thus I'm contradict the statement :  "...everyone wants to see a good Watchmen movie get made".  I genuinely don't, because I don't think it's possible or even see the point of trying (beyond making money, which is no bad thing).  I also don't think the end result is going to do the image of comics any favours, when what I believe to be the medium's greatest work turns out to be another grim'n'gritty superhero movie.
 
That said, I once swore blind that making movies of The Lord of the Rings was both impossible and unwise, and went to see 'Fellowship of thd Ring' with a heavy heart, but they did a bloody good job of making a film version of Middle Earth and maybe two or three threads of the story without spoiling the books one iota, even when they devoated drastically from the plot and/or point (Denethor not having a pallantir, for example).  

However, Lord of the Rings is hardly the masterpiece of the medium of novel writing (although it's by far my favourite book)- most of the things that are great/unique about it are up there on the screen (camaraderie, landscape, wonder, sacrifice, notions of kingship and the cost of heroism), and what's not suitable for cinema is sensibly left out and replaced with visual action (language, poetry, history, myth, genealogies).  It works a bit like movie versions of Moby Dick.  The filmable bits are up there, the other very cool bits aren't.    

I just don't see that what is great/unique about Watchmen can survive translation.  Even if it does turn out to be a good movie about Adrian's schemes on its own terms (and I have no reason to believe that it won't). I don't believe that anyone leaving the cinema is going to have experienced what makes Watchmen so very, very good.  I am prepared to be proved wrong (yet again), but I honestly can't see how it could be done.  That's not to say that it can't.

has this already been posted?

Link: movie site

Just found this on ain't it cool...

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34177

ok so jeffrey dean morgan is the comedian


patrick wilson is dan dreiberg [nite owl]


Malin Akerman is Laurie Juspeczyk [The Silk Spectre]


Billy Crudup is Jon Osterman [Dr. Manhattan]


Jackie Earle Haley is Walter Kovacs [Rorschach]


Matthew Goode is Adrian Veidt [Ozymandias]

i'll try again with a pic of Malin Akerman - Laurie Juspeczyk [The Silk Spectre]

Since clearly most people hate this idea, I presume nobody will be entering this competition to appear in the Watchmen movie?

Link: Flights included

Perhaps it's just me but she does look a lot like Gibbon's Silk Spectre, especially how he drew her nose.

not a chance.  It's the bible of it's medium and therefore not needed to be made into a film.  For examble take Hitchcock's Rear window, which i watched the other day - amazing film but I've no need for a comicbook version of it.

  To state the bleedin' obvious: it's all about the buck.  Was glad eg.  Hellboy was made into a film, 'cos it was done quite well but if it hadn't been made, still got loads of great Hellboy/BPRD to read.  I'd rather read a superb graphic novel than see a superb film.  big comic lover i guess?!

This message has been sponsered by J's Tuesday ramble.

That would be the same Rear Window that's based on a short story?

Rear Window is a 1954 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story It Had to Be Murder.

I think Watchmen would be a great teen musical, maybe Mr Webber or Tim Rice could do the music

Vangoffs Ear Huff

The Blue Man Group would jump at the chance:

Dr Manhatten does Broadway!!

I'm actually optimistic and looking forward to it.  This is wrong and a mistake.  But there you go, and here I am.