The Watchmen = best comic book ever. Watchmen the movie = worst film idea ever. This will not end well.
Terr Gilliam is probably the only director who could do this right:
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] In interviews while Munchausen was being released, Gilliam was seen to wear the famous blood-stained smiley badge familiar to fans of graphic novel Watchmen. Says Gilliam, "What happened was, Watchmen came along. Joel Silver came along and convinced me there was this 'go' project, and they had a huge budget and all that stuff, and I like Watchmen a lot; I think it's really good. And so I got caught up in that thing, and I was actually terrified of it because it was going to be one more monstrous project. But we went along with it; it was weird, because I was sort of propelled forward because it was subject matter I liked a lot, and I knew I could do it, I recognised that I was about the only person who could do it well, and then I didn't get the money. So I was 'saved' from that one."
Gilliam worked with Charles McKeown on this movie, adapting the script created by Sam Hamm, but producer Joel Silver failed to raise the finance to make this picture. "However, I was contacted by the new owner of the rights in January [1996], wanting to know if I was still interested. I think it's going to be impossible to make as a film, unless you make it three and a half hours long, which most people aren't going to want", said Gilliam.
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