The Most Celebrated Graphic Novel Of All Time.

"A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, the film is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock" - which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union - is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion - a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers - Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity... but who is watching the Watchmen?"

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/watchmen/

Thanks Erik, I got the original hardback release of Moore's Watchmen when it first came out, loved it. I just hope it doesn't get messed up like The League of Extraordinary Gentelmen.

Rory

Quoting Erik:

Quote:

I'm ashamed to say that I haven't read it yet, and it's always a little hairy to read something this "close" to the film's release, as I'm one of those people who needs some time in between a graphic novel/book/script and the final film.  I remember reading an early draft of one film, loving it, and the finished film which I saw shortly thereafter was quite different.  Took a while to shake that off.

you have 230 days before the film is released - so it shouldn't take that long to read the graphic novel 

Quoting pauls42:

Quote:
you have 230 days before the film is released - so it shouldn't take that long to read the graphic novel 

I might be a sloooow reader.   But, no, I have ordered the graphic novel regardless, so we shall see.

Quoting bigdaddyhorse:

Quote:
The trailer looks good, but this really should've been an HBO or Showtime mini-series. The whole story was so deep with so many little and not-so-little subplots, I fear much will be lost (unless they go for a 4-5 hour movie, and we all know that won't happen).

The mini-series idea was one Gilliam shared.  But after all these years, Mr. Hayter supposedly cracked the adaptation (hence my mention of the other writers above, I just hope they haven't screwed up his script).

Possible tiny spoilers ahead...

"I’ll admit... my hesitancy had to do with more than just David Hayter. I mean, Terry Gilliam himself backed away from this material, saying he didn’t believe it could work as a feature film. He said that it might work if someone would give you ten hours for a cable mini-series, but that there was no way to condense it into something smaller. Gilliam is one of my very favorite filmmakers, period, so how could someone like Hayter, someone so unproven, ever hope to pull it off?

I had my answer within the first ten pages of the script. Hayter has done the unthinkable. He’s written the first comic book screenplay to treat its source material as literature, and he’s crafted this with all the care and complexity of end-of-the-year Oscar bait. This is an epic story about responsibility and mankind’s worst nature and hope, and in the shadow of September 11th, it feels more important than it ever has before. There are very few scripts that I read each year that I feel must be made, but this is a case where the genre is literally incomplete unless this film is brought to the screen as soon as possible. This isn’t just great film writing; it’s the very model for how to adapt something and preserve it intact while still making the hard choices that anyone faces when translating something from one media to another.

And on top of that, it happens to be the single most intense, bone-crunching, bad-ass superhero story I’ve read so far in screenplay format, and if filmed, it’s going to redefine what we’re allowed to do."