300's director dishes on the highly anticipated Alan Moore adaptation.
Director Zack Snyder has become quite popular with the geeks of the world, and that's just fine with him. Snyder will be the first to tell you, he considers himself a qualified member of the geek community.
During a relaxed interview to promote 300 at the posh Beverly Hilton hotel this weekend, Snyder openly discussed his plans for his next project, Watchmen.
To give a little background on that work, Watchmen is a 12-issue graphic novel written by Alan Moore, whose other works include the graphic novels V For Vendetta and From Hell, both of which made arguably successful adaptations to the silver screen. Watchmen takes place in an alternative reality to America in 1985. Superheroes are a real part of society and the U.S. is nearing a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In the story, a group of both young and old superheroes must address the death of one of their ilk.
Watchmen is quite possibly the most critically acclaimed of all graphic novels, the recipient of the prestigious Hugo Award and listed on Time Magazine's 2005 list of the 100 Greatest English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present. It is a fan favorite that has been discussed as a potential project for adaptation to the silver screen almost since its original publish dates in 1986 and 1987. It's a difficult work to translate, which is why no studio has ever given that green light. Now, Warner Brothers is entrusting Zack Snyder with that honor. The weight of the world is now on his shoulders.
300's production methods have taken Sin City as a jumping point and opened a whole new realm of possibilities for filmmakers. Even so, Snyder sees Watchmen as a more traditional production.
"For Watchmen...there’s no reason to do it that way," says Snyder. "There are things like, ‘if you go to Mars,’ sure. I think my experience with 300 helps me with using technology; it helps me go, ‘You know what, we should do this here. When we go to Antarctica, we can do this,’ and that would be awesome. There’s things I do know how to do because of 300, but I think that Watchmen is more like Taxi Driver or Dr. Strangelove than it is Fantastic Four – so you have a stylistic thing like that."
Fans have been waiting to see a Watchmen movie for over two decades, which could be a daunting expectation level to live up to. Snyder smiles, well aware of that pressure. "Yeah, that pressure is real as real can be," he says. "There’s huge pressure from the fans, but at the same time, the way I gotta do it, and the way I work is I just sort of have to go and say, ‘Ok, I feel like when I look at what I’m planning to do, it’s cool.’ So that’s the only thing I can do in the end, and hopefully everyone else thinks it’s good."
"We’re trying to get a budget together that is palatable to everybody; it’s a long movie, and we’re trying to do [it]. And I’m trying to shoot the Black Frater part as well, and no one has ever even talked about that - it’s crazy time. And whether that ends up as a DVD extra or as a special release, that’s yet to be seen; but I don’t know, that’s my plan.
Casting rumors for Watchmen have included just about everyone in Hollywood at one point or another over the years. Although Snyder has some people in mind (and maybe even some committed), nothing is yet officially announced. "It’s not fully cast, but I’ve been talking to a lot of people... I’ll know soon, I think after...we get back from [promoting 300 in] Berlin... I’ll start to know who’s locked in.
Snyder is a very talented, hands-on director with multiple talents. On 300, he often took control of the camera. He's also a talented cartoonist himself, preferring to draw out detailed storyboards of each sequence, almost like a mini-graphic novel.
"The cool thing about that book, Watchmen is more of a linear story - not when you look at the overall, it goes all over the place - but if you look at the scenes, for instance, when Rorschach picks up the badge, and looks up and she fires this grappling gun and goes up to the thing and looks around the room – there’s no reason not to shoot it like that. I don’t know if you didn’t shoot it that way, that would mean your ego got f****d up somehow, and you thought, ‘Wow, I can do it better than that; I’ll do a low angle, and I’ll dolly in, and ooh, I’m cool.’ No, that’s not how I want to do it. So basically how I do it in my book is similar to that, I have a drawing, but then I redraw the frame because all those frames are like this. So I redraw it, but then I glue in the book right next to the drawing, the frame from the graphic novel."
Watchmen is currently set for release in 2008, but a specific date is not yet set. Stay tuned to ReelzChannel.com for more on Watchmen as we hear it.