'Potter,' 'Avatar' or 'Star Trek': What fanboy film might get a best picture nod?

"The Dark Knight" might not have beaten "Slumdog Millionaire" in last year's Oscar race, but it would've been interesting to see it given a chance.  And "Iron Man" versus "Doubt?"  Many would've chosen the Golden Avenger.  Now we will get to see these types of matchups since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expanded the best picture field to 10.

Of course, even with the expansion, some movies will still never have a chance in this category ("Watchmen," probably way too polarizing), and aside from a couple of crowd- and critic-pleasers, many may not have the quality to compete. But as this news gently wafts over the awards world, we wonder how it can/will benefit the fanboy community.

-- Jevon Phillips

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Heath Ledger's Oscar will not go to his parents after all

"The Dark Knight" snubbed in Oscar race

Oscar shocker: There will be 10 best picture nominees next year

Michael Bay's $75-million payday for 'Transformers'

Leonard Nimoy: 'Star Trek' fans can be scary

Is 'Watchmen' the 'Fight Club' of superhero films?

Counting down to 'Harry Potter'

UPDATED

You'd think I'd know better than to bet against John Horn, the veteran reporter who covers the film industry for the Los Angeles Times. You see, I know movies, but John knows the movie industry, which is a whole different thing. The bet was on predicting the second-week grosses for "Watchmen," the ambitious but imperfect super-hero epic that has the fanboy nation in wild debate about its merits and flaws.

I assumed that all the ongoing stir meant that more people would go see the film out of curiosity (the opposite of love, after all, isn't hate, it's apathy -- and I didn't sense apathy about this movie); John shook his head, smirked and compared"Watchmen" to Ang Lee's dour "Hulk," which dropped so far so fast in its second week that studio executives got windburn. Horn predicted that it would pull in less than $25 million after all the stink-bomb reviews. I took the "over" and we agreed on a wildly extravagant wager: A bowl of soup at The Times cafeteria.

Well, it looks like I'll be buying the minestrone Monday. Remember the famous tag-line, "Who watches the 'Watchmen'?" The answer: Not so many people, actually.

Here's an excerpt from movie grosses story in The Times, which starts off with the cheery numbers posted by "Race to Witch Mountain":

The film's opening success contrasted with the narrower audiences for the R-rated "Watchmen," a dark story involving flawed and troubled superheroes, and "Last House on the Left," also R-rated, a remake of a brutally violent 1972 horror movie.

According to preliminary figures released today by the studios, "Watchmen," a Warner Bros. picture, took in $18.1 million in its second week in release, bringing its total to $86 million, according to movie data tracker Media by Numbers. "Last House," from Universal, grossed $14.7 million in its first weekend.

Fox's "Taken" was fourth, selling $6.7 million in tickets to raise its total gross to $126.8 million over seven weeks. Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail," from Lionsgate, followed in fifth at $5.1 million.

Trailing them were Fox Searchlight's "Slumdog Millionaire" at $5 million, and Sony/Columbia's "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" at $3.1 million. "Slumdog," with a total domestic gross of $132.6 million, and "Paul Blart," with a total of $137.7 million, are part of this year's spate of long-running hits.

Warner had hoped to join that trend with "Watchmen," directed by Zach Snyder, whose "300" took in $71 million on its opening weekend two years ago and went on to gross more than $210 million in domestic release.

But "Watchmen's" chances for a similar success ebbed as its take in the second weekend dropped 67% from the first weekend, despite its second-place finish.

Still, the film "held better than many had expected with strong midweek grosses," noted Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers. The movie took in $3.9 million Monday, $3.4 million Tuesday and $3.9 million Wednesday, Dergarabedian said.

Sixty-seven percent drop? Yikes. I think there will be some people at Warners sobbing in their own soup when they look back on this R-rated superhero gamble ... at least the DVD and Blu-ray sales should be strong. Right?

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

"Watchmen" screenwriter David Hayter on "moral certitude"

VIDEO: "Watchmen," Saturday morning safe!

Is "Watchmen" the "Fight Club" of super-hero movies?

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

This post was updated Monday morning with extra links and the line about Ang Lee's "Hulk"...

Some films are "must-see," but "Watchmen" is more than that: Zack Snyder's masked-man epic is  the "must-discuss" movie of 2009.

Like some spandex-cinema version of "Eyes Wide Shut," "The Passion of the Christ" or "Fight Club," the movie has divided not only the critics but also the paying audience and, in a curious way, stirred debate among people who haven't even seen it.

"Watchmen" is the torrid topic on Twitter, an ongoing soapbox subject at YouTube, and the inspiration of a free-for-all on Facebook. One of my old friends has changed his Facebook photo to a frowning yellow face to mourn the movie's failure; one of my other pals has changed his image to the pulsing blue face of Dr. Manhattan to celebrate the film's triumph. For fans of the bestselling graphic novel of all time, it's not enough to see the $150-million adaptation, they must weigh in whether it is Epic Film or Epic Fail.

One fan's view, left on the comments page here at Hero Complex: "Stunning, 'Watchmen Is a visceral assault on the in the senses. Go see it You'll like it." Another respondent was less inspired: "Worst movie ever." Fans couldn't even agree on what they saw on the screen. One Hero Complex reader wrote: "I came out astonished. The movie is a great adaptation of that novel staying as true to its roots as possible." Another moaned: "Why change the story from the book?"

There are quite a few predictions that the movie will drop off considerably after the opening-weekend surge by hard-core comics fans and the mainstream-media reviews (which were not especially kind; check out the critics roundup I posted or just read Kenneth Turan's sharply executed review, which is about the best I've read and representative of the widely held view that in essence boils down to the statement "If you're a passionate fan of the book you'll enjoy the film, but otherwise..."). But even the money-making performance of the film is open to interpretation, as you can see in Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column today.

Personally, I thought the film had outsized amibition, an obvious passion for the source material and some truly great moments (that staggeringly good early montage sequence, the sequence where Dr. Manhattan slides back-and-forth through time recounting his life journey and, well, pretty much any scene with Jackie Earle Haley) but long chunks where it feels somewhat hollow. I found myself wondering how anyone who hadn't read the book could hang in for the loooong haul of the movie. I also winced whenever the actor playing Richard Nixon came on screen with his hambone imitation and rubber nose.

At the same time, I'm oddly proud of the film for even existing. It took a comic book series I adored since the day it came out and made it, with great reverence, into nothing less than the boldest popcorn movie ever made. Snyder somehow managed to get a major studio to make a movie with no stars, no "name" superheroes and a hard R-rating, thanks to all those broken bones, that oddly off-putting Owl Ship sex scene and, of course, the unforgettable glowing blue penis.

I think there's a good chance that, like "Fight Club," this movie will echo in pop culture for quite a while and become a landmark moment that will take on different contours when viewed in hindsight. Not everyone agrees with me, of course ...

Got a fun note from the vivacious Christie St. Martin (who you may know from her Funny Pages 2.0 blog) about the street-level celebration of the release of "Watchmen" up in Toronto.

Check out these alley paintings....

      

The paintings can be seen be seen by vistors to Queen Street West, the popular shopping district, on the wall outside The Silver Snail, the popular comics shop. The three photos above are by Christie's pal Jon Robertson. (He has a larger gallery of images on Facebook.)

And Christie shot the photos below which show an elaborate (and quite striking!) window display at the Snail.

And some very cool shots below...

David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times has a rundown of the numbers for "Watchmen," which opened on more screens than any R-rated film in history:

Superhero blockbuster "Watchmen" dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year.

The much-anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name cements the draw of director Zack Snyder, who also directed the hit "300."

Although there was some industry expectation that it would do so, "Watchmen" fell short of matching the $70.9 million that "300" took in during its opening weekend in March 2007.

The question now is whether the $150-million "Watchmen" will carry past Snyder's dedicated fan base in the coming weeks to win a broader audience.

READ THE REST

UPDATED

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn, who writes about Hollywood, has been tracking the business side of "Watchmen" for months. Last week, he had an insightful piece on the film's challenges finding an audience outside of die-hard fans, and in November, he wrote a detailed analysis of the nasty studio legal battle that put the project in jeopardy. Below is his latest "Watchmen" article, a piece on David Hayter.

"Watchmen" has passed through the hands of several  filmmakers — Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky among them — and more than a few studios, including 20th Century Fox, Revolution, Universal and Paramount.

Besides producer Larry Gordon, one person has been a consistent presence in the film’s most recent path to the multiplex, and that's screenwriter David Hayter.

Back when he was co-writing 2002’s "The Scorpion King," Hayter pitched Gordon on an unusual "Watchmen" adaptation: a six-hour miniseries for cable television’s HBO. Hayter says Gordon preferred to make a feature film, and Hayter set to work transforming Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into a manageable screenplay, which Hayter would direct for Universal.

Universal eventually passed on the project, and Gordon and Hayter headed to Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios, which let Hayter shoot 4½ minutes of test "Watchmen" footage with actor Ray Stevenson ("Punisher: War Zone") at London’s Pinewood Studios. "But Joe didn’t want to give $75 million to a first-timer," Hayter says of why the Revolution version of the crime-fighter story never jelled.

The movie eventually made its way to Paramount, where Greengrass ("The Bourne Identity") stepped in to direct, with Hayter moving to London for half a year to revise the script with the British filmmaker. But just a few months from the start of filming, Paramount pulled the plug, and the movie was homeless again.

Hayter’s "Watchmen" script became an issue in last year’s lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros., the studio that brought in "300" filmmaker Zack Snyder to direct. Fox executives bad-mouthed Hayter’s screenplay in internal e-mails months before the studio claimed it never had a chance to partner with Warners on the film. (A federal judge ruled in Fox’s favor, and the studio will now share in the film’s ticket sales as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.)

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

'Watchmen' staggers in second week, 67% drop in box office

UPDATED

You'd think I'd know better than to bet against John Horn, the veteran reporter who covers the film industry for the Los Angeles Times. You see, I know movies, but John knows the movie industry, which is a whole different thing. The bet was on predicting the second-week grosses for "Watchmen," the ambitious but imperfect super-hero epic that has the fanboy nation in wild debate about its merits and flaws.

I assumed that all the ongoing stir meant that more people would go see the film out of curiosity (the opposite of love, after all, isn't hate, it's apathy -- and I didn't sense apathy about this movie); John shook his head, smirked and compared"Watchmen" to Ang Lee's dour "Hulk," which dropped so far so fast in its second week that studio executives got windburn. Horn predicted that it would pull in less than $25 million after all the stink-bomb reviews. I took the "over" and we agreed on a wildly extravagant wager: A bowl of soup at The Times cafeteria.

Well, it looks like I'll be buying the minestrone Monday. Remember the famous tag-line, "Who watches the 'Watchmen'?" The answer: Not so many people, actually.

Here's an excerpt from movie grosses story in The Times, which starts off with the cheery numbers posted by "Race to Witch Mountain":

The film's opening success contrasted with the narrower audiences for the R-rated "Watchmen," a dark story involving flawed and troubled superheroes, and "Last House on the Left," also R-rated, a remake of a brutally violent 1972 horror movie.

According to preliminary figures released today by the studios, "Watchmen," a Warner Bros. picture, took in $18.1 million in its second week in release, bringing its total to $86 million, according to movie data tracker Media by Numbers. "Last House," from Universal, grossed $14.7 million in its first weekend.

Fox's "Taken" was fourth, selling $6.7 million in tickets to raise its total gross to $126.8 million over seven weeks. Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail," from Lionsgate, followed in fifth at $5.1 million.

Trailing them were Fox Searchlight's "Slumdog Millionaire" at $5 million, and Sony/Columbia's "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" at $3.1 million. "Slumdog," with a total domestic gross of $132.6 million, and "Paul Blart," with a total of $137.7 million, are part of this year's spate of long-running hits.

Warner had hoped to join that trend with "Watchmen," directed by Zach Snyder, whose "300" took in $71 million on its opening weekend two years ago and went on to gross more than $210 million in domestic release.

But "Watchmen's" chances for a similar success ebbed as its take in the second weekend dropped 67% from the first weekend, despite its second-place finish.

Still, the film "held better than many had expected with strong midweek grosses," noted Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers. The movie took in $3.9 million Monday, $3.4 million Tuesday and $3.9 million Wednesday, Dergarabedian said.

Sixty-seven percent drop? Yikes. I think there will be some people at Warners sobbing in their own soup when they look back on this R-rated superhero gamble ... at least the DVD and Blu-ray sales should be strong. Right?

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

"Watchmen" screenwriter David Hayter on "moral certitude"

VIDEO: "Watchmen," Saturday morning safe!

Is "Watchmen" the "Fight Club" of super-hero movies?

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

This post was updated Monday morning with extra links and the line about Ang Lee's "Hulk"...

Some films are "must-see," but "Watchmen" is more than that: Zack Snyder's masked-man epic is  the "must-discuss" movie of 2009.

Like some spandex-cinema version of "Eyes Wide Shut," "The Passion of the Christ" or "Fight Club," the movie has divided not only the critics but also the paying audience and, in a curious way, stirred debate among people who haven't even seen it.

"Watchmen" is the torrid topic on Twitter, an ongoing soapbox subject at YouTube, and the inspiration of a free-for-all on Facebook. One of my old friends has changed his Facebook photo to a frowning yellow face to mourn the movie's failure; one of my other pals has changed his image to the pulsing blue face of Dr. Manhattan to celebrate the film's triumph. For fans of the bestselling graphic novel of all time, it's not enough to see the $150-million adaptation, they must weigh in whether it is Epic Film or Epic Fail.

One fan's view, left on the comments page here at Hero Complex: "Stunning, 'Watchmen Is a visceral assault on the in the senses. Go see it You'll like it." Another respondent was less inspired: "Worst movie ever." Fans couldn't even agree on what they saw on the screen. One Hero Complex reader wrote: "I came out astonished. The movie is a great adaptation of that novel staying as true to its roots as possible." Another moaned: "Why change the story from the book?"

There are quite a few predictions that the movie will drop off considerably after the opening-weekend surge by hard-core comics fans and the mainstream-media reviews (which were not especially kind; check out the critics roundup I posted or just read Kenneth Turan's sharply executed review, which is about the best I've read and representative of the widely held view that in essence boils down to the statement "If you're a passionate fan of the book you'll enjoy the film, but otherwise..."). But even the money-making performance of the film is open to interpretation, as you can see in Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column today.

Personally, I thought the film had outsized amibition, an obvious passion for the source material and some truly great moments (that staggeringly good early montage sequence, the sequence where Dr. Manhattan slides back-and-forth through time recounting his life journey and, well, pretty much any scene with Jackie Earle Haley) but long chunks where it feels somewhat hollow. I found myself wondering how anyone who hadn't read the book could hang in for the loooong haul of the movie. I also winced whenever the actor playing Richard Nixon came on screen with his hambone imitation and rubber nose.

At the same time, I'm oddly proud of the film for even existing. It took a comic book series I adored since the day it came out and made it, with great reverence, into nothing less than the boldest popcorn movie ever made. Snyder somehow managed to get a major studio to make a movie with no stars, no "name" superheroes and a hard R-rating, thanks to all those broken bones, that oddly off-putting Owl Ship sex scene and, of course, the unforgettable glowing blue penis.

I think there's a good chance that, like "Fight Club," this movie will echo in pop culture for quite a while and become a landmark moment that will take on different contours when viewed in hindsight. Not everyone agrees with me, of course ...

Got a fun note from the vivacious Christie St. Martin (who you may know from her Funny Pages 2.0 blog) about the street-level celebration of the release of "Watchmen" up in Toronto.

Check out these alley paintings....

      

The paintings can be seen be seen by vistors to Queen Street West, the popular shopping district, on the wall outside The Silver Snail, the popular comics shop. The three photos above are by Christie's pal Jon Robertson. (He has a larger gallery of images on Facebook.)

And Christie shot the photos below which show an elaborate (and quite striking!) window display at the Snail.

And some very cool shots below...

David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times has a rundown of the numbers for "Watchmen," which opened on more screens than any R-rated film in history:

Superhero blockbuster "Watchmen" dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year.

The much-anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name cements the draw of director Zack Snyder, who also directed the hit "300."

Although there was some industry expectation that it would do so, "Watchmen" fell short of matching the $70.9 million that "300" took in during its opening weekend in March 2007.

The question now is whether the $150-million "Watchmen" will carry past Snyder's dedicated fan base in the coming weeks to win a broader audience.

READ THE REST

UPDATED

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn, who writes about Hollywood, has been tracking the business side of "Watchmen" for months. Last week, he had an insightful piece on the film's challenges finding an audience outside of die-hard fans, and in November, he wrote a detailed analysis of the nasty studio legal battle that put the project in jeopardy. Below is his latest "Watchmen" article, a piece on David Hayter.

"Watchmen" has passed through the hands of several  filmmakers — Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky among them — and more than a few studios, including 20th Century Fox, Revolution, Universal and Paramount.

Besides producer Larry Gordon, one person has been a consistent presence in the film’s most recent path to the multiplex, and that's screenwriter David Hayter.

Back when he was co-writing 2002’s "The Scorpion King," Hayter pitched Gordon on an unusual "Watchmen" adaptation: a six-hour miniseries for cable television’s HBO. Hayter says Gordon preferred to make a feature film, and Hayter set to work transforming Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into a manageable screenplay, which Hayter would direct for Universal.

Universal eventually passed on the project, and Gordon and Hayter headed to Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios, which let Hayter shoot 4½ minutes of test "Watchmen" footage with actor Ray Stevenson ("Punisher: War Zone") at London’s Pinewood Studios. "But Joe didn’t want to give $75 million to a first-timer," Hayter says of why the Revolution version of the crime-fighter story never jelled.

The movie eventually made its way to Paramount, where Greengrass ("The Bourne Identity") stepped in to direct, with Hayter moving to London for half a year to revise the script with the British filmmaker. But just a few months from the start of filming, Paramount pulled the plug, and the movie was homeless again.

Hayter’s "Watchmen" script became an issue in last year’s lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros., the studio that brought in "300" filmmaker Zack Snyder to direct. Fox executives bad-mouthed Hayter’s screenplay in internal e-mails months before the studio claimed it never had a chance to partner with Warners on the film. (A federal judge ruled in Fox’s favor, and the studio will now share in the film’s ticket sales as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.)

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

Is 'Watchmen' the 'Fight Club' of superhero films?

Some films are "must-see," but "Watchmen" is more than that: Zack Snyder's masked-man epic is  the "must-discuss" movie of 2009.

Like some spandex-cinema version of "Eyes Wide Shut," "The Passion of the Christ" or "Fight Club," the movie has divided not only the critics but also the paying audience and, in a curious way, stirred debate among people who haven't even seen it.

"Watchmen" is the torrid topic on Twitter, an ongoing soapbox subject at YouTube, and the inspiration of a free-for-all on Facebook. One of my old friends has changed his Facebook photo to a frowning yellow face to mourn the movie's failure; one of my other pals has changed his image to the pulsing blue face of Dr. Manhattan to celebrate the film's triumph. For fans of the bestselling graphic novel of all time, it's not enough to see the $150-million adaptation, they must weigh in whether it is Epic Film or Epic Fail.

One fan's view, left on the comments page here at Hero Complex: "Stunning, 'Watchmen Is a visceral assault on the in the senses. Go see it You'll like it." Another respondent was less inspired: "Worst movie ever." Fans couldn't even agree on what they saw on the screen. One Hero Complex reader wrote: "I came out astonished. The movie is a great adaptation of that novel staying as true to its roots as possible." Another moaned: "Why change the story from the book?"

There are quite a few predictions that the movie will drop off considerably after the opening-weekend surge by hard-core comics fans and the mainstream-media reviews (which were not especially kind; check out the critics roundup I posted or just read Kenneth Turan's sharply executed review, which is about the best I've read and representative of the widely held view that in essence boils down to the statement "If you're a passionate fan of the book you'll enjoy the film, but otherwise..."). But even the money-making performance of the film is open to interpretation, as you can see in Patrick Goldstein's Big Picture column today.

Personally, I thought the film had outsized amibition, an obvious passion for the source material and some truly great moments (that staggeringly good early montage sequence, the sequence where Dr. Manhattan slides back-and-forth through time recounting his life journey and, well, pretty much any scene with Jackie Earle Haley) but long chunks where it feels somewhat hollow. I found myself wondering how anyone who hadn't read the book could hang in for the loooong haul of the movie. I also winced whenever the actor playing Richard Nixon came on screen with his hambone imitation and rubber nose.

At the same time, I'm oddly proud of the film for even existing. It took a comic book series I adored since the day it came out and made it, with great reverence, into nothing less than the boldest popcorn movie ever made. Snyder somehow managed to get a major studio to make a movie with no stars, no "name" superheroes and a hard R-rating, thanks to all those broken bones, that oddly off-putting Owl Ship sex scene and, of course, the unforgettable glowing blue penis.

I think there's a good chance that, like "Fight Club," this movie will echo in pop culture for quite a while and become a landmark moment that will take on different contours when viewed in hindsight. Not everyone agrees with me, of course ...

Got a fun note from the vivacious Christie St. Martin (who you may know from her Funny Pages 2.0 blog) about the street-level celebration of the release of "Watchmen" up in Toronto.

Check out these alley paintings....

      

The paintings can be seen be seen by vistors to Queen Street West, the popular shopping district, on the wall outside The Silver Snail, the popular comics shop. The three photos above are by Christie's pal Jon Robertson. (He has a larger gallery of images on Facebook.)

And Christie shot the photos below which show an elaborate (and quite striking!) window display at the Snail.

And some very cool shots below...

David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times has a rundown of the numbers for "Watchmen," which opened on more screens than any R-rated film in history:

Superhero blockbuster "Watchmen" dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year.

The much-anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name cements the draw of director Zack Snyder, who also directed the hit "300."

Although there was some industry expectation that it would do so, "Watchmen" fell short of matching the $70.9 million that "300" took in during its opening weekend in March 2007.

The question now is whether the $150-million "Watchmen" will carry past Snyder's dedicated fan base in the coming weeks to win a broader audience.

READ THE REST

UPDATED

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn, who writes about Hollywood, has been tracking the business side of "Watchmen" for months. Last week, he had an insightful piece on the film's challenges finding an audience outside of die-hard fans, and in November, he wrote a detailed analysis of the nasty studio legal battle that put the project in jeopardy. Below is his latest "Watchmen" article, a piece on David Hayter.

"Watchmen" has passed through the hands of several  filmmakers — Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky among them — and more than a few studios, including 20th Century Fox, Revolution, Universal and Paramount.

Besides producer Larry Gordon, one person has been a consistent presence in the film’s most recent path to the multiplex, and that's screenwriter David Hayter.

Back when he was co-writing 2002’s "The Scorpion King," Hayter pitched Gordon on an unusual "Watchmen" adaptation: a six-hour miniseries for cable television’s HBO. Hayter says Gordon preferred to make a feature film, and Hayter set to work transforming Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into a manageable screenplay, which Hayter would direct for Universal.

Universal eventually passed on the project, and Gordon and Hayter headed to Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios, which let Hayter shoot 4½ minutes of test "Watchmen" footage with actor Ray Stevenson ("Punisher: War Zone") at London’s Pinewood Studios. "But Joe didn’t want to give $75 million to a first-timer," Hayter says of why the Revolution version of the crime-fighter story never jelled.

The movie eventually made its way to Paramount, where Greengrass ("The Bourne Identity") stepped in to direct, with Hayter moving to London for half a year to revise the script with the British filmmaker. But just a few months from the start of filming, Paramount pulled the plug, and the movie was homeless again.

Hayter’s "Watchmen" script became an issue in last year’s lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros., the studio that brought in "300" filmmaker Zack Snyder to direct. Fox executives bad-mouthed Hayter’s screenplay in internal e-mails months before the studio claimed it never had a chance to partner with Warners on the film. (A federal judge ruled in Fox’s favor, and the studio will now share in the film’s ticket sales as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.)

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

'Watchmen' hit the streets in Toronto

Got a fun note from the vivacious Christie St. Martin (who you may know from her Funny Pages 2.0 blog) about the street-level celebration of the release of "Watchmen" up in Toronto.

Check out these alley paintings....

      

The paintings can be seen be seen by vistors to Queen Street West, the popular shopping district, on the wall outside The Silver Snail, the popular comics shop. The three photos above are by Christie's pal Jon Robertson. (He has a larger gallery of images on Facebook.)

And Christie shot the photos below which show an elaborate (and quite striking!) window display at the Snail.

And some very cool shots below...

David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times has a rundown of the numbers for "Watchmen," which opened on more screens than any R-rated film in history:

Superhero blockbuster "Watchmen" dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year.

The much-anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name cements the draw of director Zack Snyder, who also directed the hit "300."

Although there was some industry expectation that it would do so, "Watchmen" fell short of matching the $70.9 million that "300" took in during its opening weekend in March 2007.

The question now is whether the $150-million "Watchmen" will carry past Snyder's dedicated fan base in the coming weeks to win a broader audience.

READ THE REST

UPDATED

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn, who writes about Hollywood, has been tracking the business side of "Watchmen" for months. Last week, he had an insightful piece on the film's challenges finding an audience outside of die-hard fans, and in November, he wrote a detailed analysis of the nasty studio legal battle that put the project in jeopardy. Below is his latest "Watchmen" article, a piece on David Hayter.

"Watchmen" has passed through the hands of several  filmmakers — Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky among them — and more than a few studios, including 20th Century Fox, Revolution, Universal and Paramount.

Besides producer Larry Gordon, one person has been a consistent presence in the film’s most recent path to the multiplex, and that's screenwriter David Hayter.

Back when he was co-writing 2002’s "The Scorpion King," Hayter pitched Gordon on an unusual "Watchmen" adaptation: a six-hour miniseries for cable television’s HBO. Hayter says Gordon preferred to make a feature film, and Hayter set to work transforming Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into a manageable screenplay, which Hayter would direct for Universal.

Universal eventually passed on the project, and Gordon and Hayter headed to Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios, which let Hayter shoot 4½ minutes of test "Watchmen" footage with actor Ray Stevenson ("Punisher: War Zone") at London’s Pinewood Studios. "But Joe didn’t want to give $75 million to a first-timer," Hayter says of why the Revolution version of the crime-fighter story never jelled.

The movie eventually made its way to Paramount, where Greengrass ("The Bourne Identity") stepped in to direct, with Hayter moving to London for half a year to revise the script with the British filmmaker. But just a few months from the start of filming, Paramount pulled the plug, and the movie was homeless again.

Hayter’s "Watchmen" script became an issue in last year’s lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros., the studio that brought in "300" filmmaker Zack Snyder to direct. Fox executives bad-mouthed Hayter’s screenplay in internal e-mails months before the studio claimed it never had a chance to partner with Warners on the film. (A federal judge ruled in Fox’s favor, and the studio will now share in the film’s ticket sales as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.)

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

'Watchmen' pulls in $55 million

David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times has a rundown of the numbers for "Watchmen," which opened on more screens than any R-rated film in history:

Superhero blockbuster "Watchmen" dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year.

The much-anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name cements the draw of director Zack Snyder, who also directed the hit "300."

Although there was some industry expectation that it would do so, "Watchmen" fell short of matching the $70.9 million that "300" took in during its opening weekend in March 2007.

The question now is whether the $150-million "Watchmen" will carry past Snyder's dedicated fan base in the coming weeks to win a broader audience.

READ THE REST

UPDATED

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn, who writes about Hollywood, has been tracking the business side of "Watchmen" for months. Last week, he had an insightful piece on the film's challenges finding an audience outside of die-hard fans, and in November, he wrote a detailed analysis of the nasty studio legal battle that put the project in jeopardy. Below is his latest "Watchmen" article, a piece on David Hayter.

"Watchmen" has passed through the hands of several  filmmakers — Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky among them — and more than a few studios, including 20th Century Fox, Revolution, Universal and Paramount.

Besides producer Larry Gordon, one person has been a consistent presence in the film’s most recent path to the multiplex, and that's screenwriter David Hayter.

Back when he was co-writing 2002’s "The Scorpion King," Hayter pitched Gordon on an unusual "Watchmen" adaptation: a six-hour miniseries for cable television’s HBO. Hayter says Gordon preferred to make a feature film, and Hayter set to work transforming Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into a manageable screenplay, which Hayter would direct for Universal.

Universal eventually passed on the project, and Gordon and Hayter headed to Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios, which let Hayter shoot 4½ minutes of test "Watchmen" footage with actor Ray Stevenson ("Punisher: War Zone") at London’s Pinewood Studios. "But Joe didn’t want to give $75 million to a first-timer," Hayter says of why the Revolution version of the crime-fighter story never jelled.

The movie eventually made its way to Paramount, where Greengrass ("The Bourne Identity") stepped in to direct, with Hayter moving to London for half a year to revise the script with the British filmmaker. But just a few months from the start of filming, Paramount pulled the plug, and the movie was homeless again.

Hayter’s "Watchmen" script became an issue in last year’s lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros., the studio that brought in "300" filmmaker Zack Snyder to direct. Fox executives bad-mouthed Hayter’s screenplay in internal e-mails months before the studio claimed it never had a chance to partner with Warners on the film. (A federal judge ruled in Fox’s favor, and the studio will now share in the film’s ticket sales as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.)

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

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Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

'Watchmen' screenwriter David Hayter: 'The movie is all about moral certitude'

UPDATED

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn, who writes about Hollywood, has been tracking the business side of "Watchmen" for months. Last week, he had an insightful piece on the film's challenges finding an audience outside of die-hard fans, and in November, he wrote a detailed analysis of the nasty studio legal battle that put the project in jeopardy. Below is his latest "Watchmen" article, a piece on David Hayter.

"Watchmen" has passed through the hands of several  filmmakers — Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky among them — and more than a few studios, including 20th Century Fox, Revolution, Universal and Paramount.

Besides producer Larry Gordon, one person has been a consistent presence in the film’s most recent path to the multiplex, and that's screenwriter David Hayter.

Back when he was co-writing 2002’s "The Scorpion King," Hayter pitched Gordon on an unusual "Watchmen" adaptation: a six-hour miniseries for cable television’s HBO. Hayter says Gordon preferred to make a feature film, and Hayter set to work transforming Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into a manageable screenplay, which Hayter would direct for Universal.

Universal eventually passed on the project, and Gordon and Hayter headed to Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios, which let Hayter shoot 4½ minutes of test "Watchmen" footage with actor Ray Stevenson ("Punisher: War Zone") at London’s Pinewood Studios. "But Joe didn’t want to give $75 million to a first-timer," Hayter says of why the Revolution version of the crime-fighter story never jelled.

The movie eventually made its way to Paramount, where Greengrass ("The Bourne Identity") stepped in to direct, with Hayter moving to London for half a year to revise the script with the British filmmaker. But just a few months from the start of filming, Paramount pulled the plug, and the movie was homeless again.

Hayter’s "Watchmen" script became an issue in last year’s lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros., the studio that brought in "300" filmmaker Zack Snyder to direct. Fox executives bad-mouthed Hayter’s screenplay in internal e-mails months before the studio claimed it never had a chance to partner with Warners on the film. (A federal judge ruled in Fox’s favor, and the studio will now share in the film’s ticket sales as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.)

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

'Watchmen,' Saturday morning safe

You know Zack Snyder frequently jokes that Warner Bros. might try out "Watchmen Babies" as a sequel? I'm guessing that planted a seed that led to this great spoof video which presents the R-Rated characters in a kiddie cartoon that might remind you a bit of the "Saturday Night Live" animation of Robert Smigel or perhaps "The Tick."

Love it, especially Rorschach with the dogs.

-- Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

VIDEO: Mr. T talks smack to Superman

VIDEO: "Watchmen" spoof about, uh, lower Manhattan

VIDEO: "Star Trek," Monty Python-style

VIDEO: Batman's bad day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

All eyes on 'Watchmen's' box office: $25.1M opening day

The big-screen adaptation of DC Comics' "Watchmen" failed to set opening Friday records but still had a strong initial showing at the box office. The Zack Snyder-directed film brought in an estimated $25.1 million on Friday, according to trade reports.

Variety writes that "Watchmen" had one of the best opening days ever for an R-rated film, behind Friday openings for "The Matrix Reloaded" and "300," another Synder-helmed picture. The second "Matrix" film had an opening day of $37.5 million and "300" pulled in $28.1 million, according to figures available on the website for Box Office Mojo. The R-rated "Passion of the Christ" had a massive opening day as well, roping in $26.6 million on a Wednesday, according to the site.

Overall, Box Office Mojo reports, "Watchmen" had the fifth-highest opening for an R-rated movie. "Sex and the City" had a summer opening just ahead of the numbers posted by "Passion of the Christ" at $26.8 million. Among only superhero movies, the site reports that "Watchmen" had the eighth-highest opening day.

In 2007, Snyder's "300" went on to gross $70.9 million in its first three days, and it eventually brought in more than $210 million in tickets in North America. In discussing the box-office potential of "Watchmen," The Times' John Horn noted that "Warner Bros. and partners Paramount Pictures and Legendary Pictures have invested about $150 million in making 'Watchmen' -- more than twice the $64-million budget of '300.' "

"Watchmen," however, had a stellar showing in its Friday midnight shows. The film opened with a $4.55-million take, ahead of recent midnight openings of franchise films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," according to the Hollywood Reporter. The midnight numbers are included in the $25.1 million.

Lionsgate's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" maintained its second-place position, bringing in $2.5 million on Friday.

-- Todd Martens

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

"Watchmen" review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "Watchmen" coverage at Hero Complex

Photo: DC Comics/Warner Bros.

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

Blue humor: 'Attack of the Show' takes on lower Manhattan

Has there ever been as much casual, male frontal nudity in a major Hollywood film as there is in "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder wanted to be intensely faithful to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that meant presenting Dr. Manhattan with his glowing blue genitalia out there for all the world to see. Over at G4, that inspired the folks at "Attack of the Show" to dig deep for some gags; it's coarse humor, not lewd, but you'll want to skip it if you don't appreciate ripe terms such as "man luggage."

— Geoff Boucher

MORE RANDOM SILLINESS

The Rancor vs. George Lucas

VIDEO: How many Spider-Mans fit in a Jamba Juice?

VIDEO: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

VIDEO: "SNL" flashback, superhero party 1979

                                     VIDEO: Monty Python meets the crew of the USS Enterprise

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets darker than 'Grey's' in 'Watchmen'

He plays the brutal Comedian, whose murder kick-starts the story. (What is it with him playing dead guys, anyway?)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan chuckled through cigarette smoke and held up a homemade key chain that had just been passed to him by a stranger. "Look at this," he said in a tobacco-cured growl as he nodded toward the photograph in the dangling plastic frame; it was a hazy picture of the actor's Rottweiler mix, Bisou. "These fans, they are something," the actor said with a tone of marvel and some low-grade alarm. "Wow. I mean, this is my dog."

After years as a struggling actor, the 42-year-old Morgan has been receiving an intense indoctrination in the ways of celebrity. First, the Seattle native took on the role of Denny Duquette, the doomed hunk with a heart, on "Grey's Anatomy" and connected with fans and the show's producers so deeply that the character was brought back from the dead (sort of) to become a spectral lover for Katherine Heigl's confused Izzy Stevens. That made him a haunting heartthrob to millions of viewers. And now, as a star of "Watchmen," the hotly anticipated (and debated) superhero epic that reaches theaters Friday, Morgan finds himself becoming an instant icon to the millions of fanboys who approach the "Watchmen" graphic novel as something close to a sacred text and the Hollywood adaptation as a sort of spandex-cinema equivalent to "The Passion of the Christ."

"These people take ['Watchmen'] very seriously, and with good reason," Morgan said last weekend as he enjoyed a much-needed smoke after several smothering hours at WonderCon, the massive pop-culture expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Thousands of fans had waited in line for hours to hear Morgan and fellow cast members talk about their characters and themselves on a panel that, within minutes, was pinging across the globe thanks to flip-phone cameras and the Internet.

Read the entire article

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

 

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

'Watchmen' review by Kenneth Turan

"Watchmen" ski masks? Alan Moore won't be pleased

Trailer: "Tales of the Black Freighter''

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX