Director Zack Snyder has made a feature-film name for himself with genre projects, debuting on the big screen with 2004's
Dawn of the Dead remake and currently putting the finishing touches on his sophomore effort, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel
300. In New York this week to discuss that film, Snyder also sat down with IGN to talk about his
next movie another comic book adaptation this time of DC Comics'
Watchmen. He says that he expects that film to get underway very soon.
"It's the only thing I'm really working on right now, so if I don't do that I've got to find something else!" he laughs, adding that once he completes
300 he will go directly into full gear on
Watchmen. "There's no break, hopefully none, between
300 and
Watchmen. They'll just roll us right over. We'll probably start
Watchmen and then come back and do publicity for
300. Right now we're still finishing
300, so I'd say I've got another three weeks of shots waiting to come in. And then in the meantime I'm trying to maybe make a commercial, maybe make some money, which is cool!"
The original comic book, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, told an epic superhero story that many in the industry have long thought to be un-filmable (the movie project has undergone several permutations in its years in development). Snyder believes that the key to the movie is to stay true to Moore's original vision, even if by necessity certain aspects of the story must be cut due to running time constraints. His
Watchmen will not be stretched over a series of films with sequels and the like, despite the trend of other comic-to-film adaptations like
Spider-Man and
X-Men.
"It's a labor of love, and I've wanted to try to get back to the source material as much as I could without it being, of course, a six-hour long movie. And I would say the fans are probably going, 'What do you mean? You say that like it's a bad thing!'" he smiles. "I will tell you that the draft of the script is long. It's so long in fact that when we turned it in, we turned 'The Black Freighter' stuff in as a separate script so as not to scare them too much. We were like, 'Here's your script. Oh, here's your other script!' They were like, 'Oh, great!'"
"The Black Freighter" elements of
Watchmen are one aspect that could be cut from the film if need be, though Snyder is already investigating avenues of release for an extended cut of the film.
"I want 'The Black Freighter' stuff in it," he says. "It will all depend on how [the studio] likes it. I feel like they don't really question it, like, 'Why, what is this?' But we've designed the movie so that it works without it. We have the places designed where that story would go and then if they want it, [they have it] for like extended theatrical or limited theatrical, or definitely for DVD. That's the one cool thing we have is DVD, and in my opinion it's not exploited nearly enough. [We could use that] to create the three-hour version of
Watchmen. And [as a director] I'm totally fine with that, but I feel like that's a battle I haven't lost yet, so I'm not going to concede to it yet."
Like
300 and
Sin City before it,
Watchmen will likely utilize green screen backgrounds at times, with the final scenes being rendered in CGI. But unlike those earlier films, it will also feature standard scenes with real backgrounds and sets.
"We're doing some conceptual discussions about production methodology, things of that nature, things like, 'Will it be a green screen movie or will it be a real movie?' And I think that we have kind of found the reality of the movie," the director explains. "There are moments that are green screen, moments that are real. Basically I think with
Watchmen it'll take every trick, every tool to get this world, this
Watchmen world. I feel like probably the green screen stuff is going to be [the] Mars and Antarctica [scenes], and of course Vietnam. All that stuff is in the movie right now, absolutely."
Snyder and his production team are also discussing what technology they should use when depicting Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who in the world of
Watchmen are still running the country in the mid-'80s, when the comic takes place.
"The whole trick to me is how do you do Nixon and Kissinger," he says. "It's like that fine line. I do like the idea of using some newsreel footage, but I also like the idea of making history into cinema, and trying to get someone and make him look as much like Nixon as I can, get someone and make him look as much like Kissinger as I can, so you sort of feel this cinematic version of reality, if that makes sense. One of the early battles I had [with the studio] was getting it set in 1985, getting them to stay with the Cold War, getting them to feel like Nixon is an asset to the movie, to feel like those elements match, and I'm a huge advocate of that approach. I think I have [won that battle] right now. They told me when we first talked about it, 'It's going to be the war on terror, it's going to be 2007, blah, blah, blah.' And I agreed, and I went off to do it, and of course I came back and it was 1985. I didn't try to be subversive, but that's what wound up being right."
So while Snyder and his writer Alex Tse have made strides on the project, they continue to tinker with the script and dance the dance with the studio until production starts.
"You know how it works," laughs Snyder. "The studio says, 'Make us a movie,' we give them a script, and they go, 'Hmmm, really?' And we have to go, 'Really!' So that's the part that we're at right now. And I think, honestly, I'm really happy with the version of the script we have right now. Alex has killed it and done an amazing job writing this script."
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