The Screengrab

Robert Downey, Jr., America's scamp, has tasted what the other guys are selling and found it lacking. Downey, whose star vehicle Iron Man got the summer movie season of 2008 off to a bang back when it opened several hundred years ago, has given an interview to moviehole.com in which he found it impossible to discourse on what made his movie so special, and what will make its sequel (which reunites him with director Jon Favreau and Tropic Thunder co-writer Justin Theroux, who's working on the script) so special, without talking about what makes it different from The Dark Knight. Whereas Iron Man is "a very simple movie", Downey says of the Batman blockbuster, "It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.'

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Now that Dark Knight is finally going to be opening nationwide, we can finally return to the natural occupation of the comic book fan:  deranged obsession over Zack Snyder's upcoming movie adaptation of Watchmen.

As we've discussed before, one of the problems with the recent wave of successful motion picture adaptations of comic book properties is that while they've made tons of money for the producers of the movies, it hasn't worked the other way around. Comic book companies have slavered to get their properties on screen in recent years, in the hopes that audiences turned on by the big-screen adventures of Batman or the X-Men will follow those characters into their local comic book shop.  This is especially important in these days of direct sales, when comic book sales are at a historical low, and people speak in non-hysterical terms about the demise of the industry.  So it's worth noting that the millions in profit made my comic book movies hasn't generally been matched by a notable increase in comic book sales, one comic is bucking that trend:  Watchmen. 

One of the earliest comic book mini-series to take advantage of the 'graphic novel collection' format in the 1980s, Watchmen was already one of the most successful titles in DC's history, despite its indie sensibilities, adult storytelling, and complex, morally difficult story.  But with the movie adaptation getting ever closer, its sales have shot way up -- and DC plans to capitalize on the interest in spades.  They'll be promoting an aggressive three-pronged marketing attack to ensure that anyone sucked in by the movie to the degree that they absolutely must have the comic will be able to get one with not trouble.  The triple attack includes a retailer discount for any shops that wish to carry the original softcover graphic novel; a new hardbound edition for collectors; and a deluxe edition featuring making-of material, rare artwork, and other bonus materials, the comic book equivalent of a fancy Criterion Collection disc.

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As more and more movies are made from comic books, the issues of creator's rights will increasingly pick at the film industry.  With Marvel and DC products, it's generally not an issue -- not only are most of the creators long dead, but the characters themselves are corporate properties, held by two huge companies and not beholden to any single artist or writer.  With independent comics, however, the issue grows much more complex.  Some creators will be happy simply to sell the rights to their characters and stories for the kind of huge paycheck that only Hollywood can write; others will insist on being involved, to one degree or another, in the production of any film based on the characters they created.  Frank Miller represents one extreme; displeased at the prospect of what liberties the movies would take with his characters, he decided to learn the film business himself so as to be able to exert maximum control over his properties in 300  and Sin City.  (Although he didn't create the Spirit, he's taking a similarly proprietary approach in the creation of that movie.)  Mike Mignola represents perhaps the oppisite end of the spectrum:  always fiercely protective of the Hellboy character from the time it first appeared in Dark Horse Comics, he has learned when it's proper to let go of his creation in order to see it succeed on the big screen.

In an interview with Comics2Film regarding the new Hellboy 2:  The Golden Army movie, which opens in wide release this weekend, Mignola discusses the differences between the comics and the film, the trust he came to develop with director Guillermo Del Toro when it came to creating the look of the movie, and how he had to learn when to let go of his own beliefs about what the movie should be and how it shouldn't be necessary for there to be major divergence between the two.  "The first film was a loose adaptation, but it was coming off my work, and it was basically taking the Hellboy universe that I had created and translating it into del Toro's world.  The second film, we chucked that idea after about eight hours because even in the first film, that character is already veering away from the world I created in the comic," says Mignola.  "I know in the first film, he was making conscious decisions to try to suggest certain things that I do in the artwork...I'd love to think that he got some of that from studying my comic, but I think he's just a very careful craftsman."

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In our ongoing quest to bring you every single solitary detail of the production of Zack Snyder's upcoming adaptation of The Watchmen until your head falls off, we are pleased to report an interesting development in the filming of the comic book masterpiece -- and one that has repercussions, as amazing as it may seem, to peope other than the hardcore geeks who are even at this moment salivating over the prospect of more Watchmen news.

One of the questions that has long nagged Watchmen fans (other than "will Snyder suddenly become much more talented when he begins work on this film?" and "are they kidding with that cast, or what?") is how the filmmakers can possibly cram the entire story of the comic into a two-hour movie.  Alan Moore's Watchmen is one of the most complex comic series in history, full of dense symbolism, intricate reference, and tons of backstory -- much of it vital to the main plot -- told in supplemental materials that appeared in the back pages of the comic.  No standard-length feature film could possibly capture all of that intricacy, and without it, many feared that the overall quality of the project would suffer.

Now, in an interesting piece in the New York Times, comes word that Snyder is not making one film, but two, simultaneously:  The Watchmen itself, and Tales of the Black Freighter, an animated feature-length adaptation of the metafictional comic-within-a-comic read by a minor character in the Watchmen, which served to both illuminate and amplify some of the themes and symbols of the main story.  Tales of the Black Freighter will not be included in the Watchmen movie -- but it will be released, on its own, as a separate DVD, only five days after the film is released in theatres. 

As the Times article makes clear, this is the first step in a new strategy by Warner Brothers of producing value-added DVDs designed, in an era of cable television 'video on demand', to boost DVD sales when they're beginning to falter for the first time in their history.  Warner has already had considerable success with this tactic in direct-to-video releases set in the DC Animated universe (such as Superman:  Doomsday and Justice League:  New Frontier), and the company claims this is about much more than just piling on extra junk for completists:  it allows Snyder to tell a more complete story than the time limitations of the Watchmen movie will allow, and it allows the company to essentially profit three times off the the DVD market for the movie:  first, with this supplemental release, which they anticipate selling in huge numbers on release; second, with the DVD release, months later, of the actual Watchmen movie; and third, with a deluxe package containing both, as well as other supplemental materials (including, it's rumored, a faux-documentary short film of Hollis Mason's Under the Hood -- another book-within-the-book featured in the Watchmen comic that likewise gave vital background information on the characters and their relationships).

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One of the niftiest features of Alan Moore's brilliant Watchmen comic was its fully realized fictional world:  every aspect of the near-future alternate-reality America was fleshed out, from the names of the newspapers to the look of the pop fashion trends of the moment to the fast food joints and retail stores.  Even the televisions were populated by cleverly thought-out commercials, many of them for products manufactured by Veidt Enterprises, the monolithic corporate giant run by ex-superhero Ozymandias.

Director Zack Snyder is determined to recreate this depth of field as much as possible, but he can't be bothered to actually make the commercials himself, since he is busy filming the movie and blogging endlessly about filming the movie.  So he's making you do it!  Or, more specifically, YouTube.  Snyder is running a contest on the video-hosting site, inviting fans to create their own Veidt Enterprises commercials.  If yours gets picked, you'll get thousands of dollars from the makers of this hugely expensive Hollywood blockbuster film! 

Ha ha, no, just kidding. But you do have a chance to get your commercial featured in the movie -- for free!  It's not exploitation if you enjoy it!  Me, I'm picturing an ad for Veidt's "Nostalgia" cologne featuring an 80-year-old Wilford Brimley muttering, "You can smell like it's 1956 again."

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Boy, it seems like forever since we've had any Watchmen news, doesn't it? Well, don't worry, fellow slavering comic book fans: we fully intend to completely suck every tiny bit of magic out of the movie by relentlessly cramming every bit of Watchmen-related insider gossip down your gullets until, by the time the movie finally comes out sometime around the crack of doom, you will feel like you have already seen it eighteen times and be utterly sick of it. You're welcome.

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Honestly, folks, we don't know why we're so obsessed with Watchmen news lately.  We'll stop as soon as the movie comes out and is terrible, we promise.  In the meantime, we're obviously not the only people who can't get enough of the hype, because when Jeffrey Dean Morgan was at a press junket promoting P.S. I Love You, all anyone wanted to talk to him about was his role as the Comedian in the upcoming comic adaptation.  Morgan reports that the sets, which have only been seen in a few photos released by director Zack Snyder, are "so true to the book it's insane", discussed the challenge of playing a morally reprehensible character like the Comedian, and vows that the film is "going to change the way people look at movies".  Meanwhile, artist Dave Gibbons, who drew the original Watchmen graphic novel (and who, because author Alan Moore maintains a policy of having nothing to do with film adaptations of his work, is the only creator involved in the movie), visited the set for the first time, describing the sensation of seeing the characters he helped bring into existence walking around and talking as "the most surreal experience of my life".  Gibbons, who Morgan reports was tearing up at seeing the sets, keeps mum about the specifics of the film, as have most people working on the set, but claims that among the cast and crew there is a "palpable commitment to do this right".  Only 15 months to go...

The productions of perhaps the two most anticipated comic book adaptations of all time — Watchmen and The Dark Knight — have both kicked into high gear, and there’s plenty of geeky content to go around before the movies actually end up in the can.  (Try not to think too hard about the fact that Dark Knight draws only its title, and nothing else, from Frank Miller’s stunning Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, or that Watchmen is being directed by a guy who turned another, far lesser Frank Miller book into a homoerotic big-screen video game.) In the Guardian, film blogger Sean Dodson provides a handy rundown of the astonishingly large number of Dark Knight teaser websites that have sprung up in the last few weeks (including ones for the Gotham Police Department, the local newspaper and a creepily amusing recruitment site for the Joker’s henchmen). Meanwhile, Zack Snyder himself provides some photos from the back lot of Watchmen, which contain lots of goodies for longtime fans of the comic (lots of characters, locations, companies, and other cultural references to the book are present in the background of the shots), although the set designer doesn’t seem to realize that Grain Belt beer has never been a big seller in New York.
— Leonard Pierce