Watchmen Release Date And Movie Poster Revealed

Zack Snyder made an appearance at Comic Con to promote his upcoming big screen adaptation of Watchmen. Snyder is one of those guys who talks in sound-bytes. Everything he says is interesting of relevant and he spits out the information in a rapid fire pace, at times almost like a Machine gun. I really tried to capture what Snyder was saying in an easily readable posting, but found the task to be impossible. Below, not only can you find my notes, but also the audiofile from the event.

Audio File Will be Uploaded Shortly.

I wasn't a fan of Snyder's 300, but really enjoyed his Dawn of the Dead remake (or at least the kick ass first 15 minutes of it). And I've seen Snyder speak on many occasions and have usually found him to be self indulgent and arrogant. That said, I think he might be the perfect person to bring Watchmen to the big screen. His Comic-Con pitch sold me. He's promising an R-Rated superhero film that will conform to the source material as much as it can (and probably more than most other adaptations). He says he refuses to try to make the film more accessible.

Snyder also revealed the movie poster and release date (3-06-09) for the film, seen right. Click on the image to enlarge.

"It's an R-Rated super hero movie."

"I don't know if Watchmen should come to the people, or if the people should come to it," says Snyder. "If you get in the place in your life when you need watchman you'll go find it. I don't think we're going to try to make it accessible to teenyboppers."

"The cool thing about cinema right now is. Look at all the super hero movies we've had in the last 15 years. In a lot of ways mainstream cinema audience are where a lot of comic fans were when Watchmen found them. They needed something else, and Watchmen changed what they thought about superheros."

"I think the mistake, i mean approach is to assume that the movie knows better. Its like when someone says 'oh we made a movie and you should be happy that we did.' I don't assume that at all. I have the upmost respect for the material."

Sets: "We have a lot of sets we're building in Vancouver. We're building a New York City backlot. It's pretty practical except for the sets for Antarctica and Mars."

Production Design: "Our plan is to make the movie a little more realistic. The sets do have a style, but it's not like Sin City. It's a lot more like Se7en."

Cast: "The cast in my opinion is basically perfect in the sense that we actually have real actors in this movie and it's not an exercise in marketing. I don't know if this means anything, but I made a movie called 300 which didn't have any stars and a couple people saw it." [crowd went wild]

Snyder seemed pretty bummed that The Hollywood Reporter beat him to the casting announcement that he was scheduled to make at the convention. He addressed public comments that the cast is may-be too young for the roles.

"In the graphic novel, there is a lot of flashbacks in the movie. And what I didn't want to do is cast two different actors for each characters. I find that confusing," said Snyder. "I just didn't feel like that was what I wanted to see. So I wanted to hire actors who were in the middle of their age and age them up and down."

Billy will be transformed into a completely computer generated character for Dr. Manhattan. Snyder compares this to some of the digital characters in Pirates of the Caribbean.

"We've done some tests and it's looking pretty cool."

"I want to see the Pirate Story in the movie. I think it's really cool and comments on the world a lot. Everyday we talk about 'Okay, we need a budget for the pirates story.'

Alan Moore: "We all want to please Alan [Moore], and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I don't want the guy who created the thing to hate it," said Snyder. "Alan has asked a long time ago that his name not be on the movie. I do talk to Dave Gibbons all the time and he thinks the script is supercool."

Someone asked if Zack was really considering Keanu Reeves for a role in the film:  "I did talk to Keanu [Reeves], and he is a very nice man and a talented actor. That's all I have to say"