Of all the things that the comic book Watchmen has been called, the most common is 'unfilmable'. After all, here is a superhero series that turned the category on its head and, since debuting in September 1986, has attracted legions of die-hard fans.
Given the labyrinthine storylines and vastly complex characters, it's not surprising that Watchmen has taken so long to make it to the big screen. Even though new issues are no longer being produced - Alan Moore's limited series of 12 stopped after one year - the film itself has been in development since the late 1990s.
'Overall, it was trying to manage the ideas in relationship to the story that was the most challenging,' says Zack Snyder, the director who took over the project from Paul Greengrass when Warner Brothers picked up the script from Paramount. 'There's lots of symbolism and commentary on pop culture, politics and sexuality, and it was trying to manage that as well as the performances.'
The film has been one of the most buzzed about in recent months, spawning an endless number of blogs and chat sites.
The screen version is almost entirely faithful to the original story. That said, it is frighteningly violent, contains explicit sexuality and explores complicated themes ranging from the end of the world to morality. It is not a children's movie.
Snyder says the final product is vastly different from what studio executives expected. He recalls a meeting a couple of years ago with Warner executives who had what they thought was a perfectly workable 110-page script. They wanted it to take place in modern times, be rated PG-13, become a franchise and, as Snyder says, 'have the classic bad guy-good guy plot where the good guy kills the bad guy at the end'.
