Zack Snyder’s been taking some footage from his new film, Frank Miller’s 300, around to journalists and wowing them (I see the footage next week). He’s also been talking up his next project – Watchmen.
It seems that Snyder and his screenwriter Alex Tse have cracked the graphic novel in their own way. He told SciFi Wire what he thought the problem with the other attempts on the movie was: “What they tried to do is turn it into a movie. And that’s not really how we approached it. … [Co-writer Alex [Tse] and I were [like], ‘What … [about the] graphic novel do we love? Let’s do that!’ And I think that when we delivered that version of the script to [Warner Bros], and it was long of course, … it’s not [a metaphor for the] war on terror, it’s not like trying to be, like, bulls–t updated. You know, which gets confusing. And then Adrian [Veidt]’s story gets all, like, lost with that. So … that was the thing that cracked it: Just going back to the source. Saying, ‘OK, why does this work here?’ It seemed really obvious. It was weird. … It’s pretty exciting. They’re pretty excited."
Snyder insists that the studio is excited about setting the movie in 1985, when the comic originally came out, and having Richard Nixon still be president. Watchmen takes place in an alternate universe that answers the question of what would have happened if a real superhuman being had existed – in this case the all-powerful Dr. Manhattan. Snyder’s vision is to have the movie open with a tour of the Watchmen universe’s alternate history, from the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam all the way through to 85.
For more from Snyder, head over to SciFi Wire. Look for my reaction to the 300 footage some time next week! I can’t wait.