Filmstalker, There's an interesting interview with David Hayter, one of the writers of the Watchmen film adaptation, online. The reason I find it interesting is that he reveals what changes the studios wanted to make to it before releasing the film.
What's surprising is that they wanted to make such fundamental changes that it wouldn't be Watchmen any more, and these are the pen pushing, accounts focused, studio executives. What do they know about one of the most successful comic series ever? Well you can see next to nothing.
According to David Hayter they took the Watchmen script to four different Hollywood studios and they were all pretty much asking the same questions, and idiotic ones at that:
"It was protecting the integrity of the project from all the different studios we took it to. I had it at four different studios and it would inevitably come down to the same notes, which were "It's a six-person movie, can we make it about one person?" and "We don't like all these flashbacks, can we get rid of these flashbacks?" Well, we're stretching over events that reach for 40 years, so we kind of need the flashbacks, and it's not about one person, it's about six people. So, I can write you a movie with no flashbacks and only one main character, but that's not Watchmen, that's a different thing, and you're gonna have to pay me again. So eventually, we would part ways with each successive studio as they lost their nerve to make that movie and what we knew."
Lost their nerve? Hardly, it doesn't sound like they lost their nerve at all, it sounds like they were out to totally butcher the project from the start and just make something that would fill out the balance sheets - six actors cost too much, flashbacks would need a lot of production work.
The comments from Hayter come from The Week in Geek through WatchmenComicMovie.com and FirstShowing, and really stagger belief - how could the studio's be so blind to what the story really is?
You have to wonder what stupid changes studios are putting other films through before they get to the big screen, or get scrapped. Imagine what Watchmen would have been if they had just made it about one character and in the present day? There goes your depth and we'd have a simple Watchman superhero story. Idiots.
1 comment:
Yep, pretty lame, but possibly the result of ignorance more than actual stupidity. Probably the ignorami were aware the story came from a comic book, but had no idea of Watchmen's impact and history and thought you could just retool it into another superhero story.
Still, that is freakin' frustrating. No wonder Alan Moore never sees any of the movies based on his work.
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