The New York Times reported yesterday that a direct-to-DVD Watchmen spinoffs/tie-in is in the works: "Tales of The Black Freighter." That's right, the pirate storyline in the original graphic novel. Because pirates sell.
"The immediate goal is for the parallel release to help start a potential new movie franchise. As television advertising becomes less effective because of declining TV viewership, movie studios need to reach a mass audience somehow, and having what amounts to ads sitting on store shelves is seen as a crucial antidote."
I remember me and my friends were discussing Sunday over homemade sangria Alan Moore's strong negative feelings about movie adaptations of his work. Annnnd...this is probably why, you know.
But do you think this will help finally restart the pirate comic book genre?
I think moving the pirate segments into its own deal is a good idea and worth a try. If they tried to stuff it into the film, we'd have an eight hour epic on our hands.
ReplyDeleteI think Under the Cowl will be part of that DVD as well.
It'll be funny to see if pirate fans pic it up without realizing it's part of Watchmen. Pirates will need a fix to fill the void now that there are no more Pirates of the Caribbean movies coming out soon.
was that about pirates? it's been awhile since i've read watchmen, but i seem to just remember the guy lost at sea.
ReplyDeletei'm cautiously optimistic about the watchmen movie, the pictures i've seen of the set and characters look nice, and the director seems to be a fan of the work.
i wasn't a fan of 300, however the comic wasn't something i was interested in either... so yes cautiously optimistic.
i have no real opinion about this movie, kind of a neat idea, real potential to be lame.
i'm all for a revival of pirate comics though.
I think you may being overly pessimistic about this. Zach Snyder fought like hell to even make this happen. A movie was going to be made, we should all just be thankful that even though Alan Moore wants nothing to do with it, it's being made by someone that, at the core, just wants to honor the source.
ReplyDelete300 was a groin-grabbingly accurate to the source adaptation like Sin City was. Only, 300 actually had new material so there was actually something to the film beyond sounds and moving pictures.
ReplyDeleteI think Alan Moore doesn't like the idea of a Watchmen movie because Alan Moore has an ego the size of something ineffably huge. Total primadonna with his "my genius is so grand only I can fashion it and only my comic pages can contain it! everyone else is an uncreative rube!"
As much as I like most of your writing, I think you were off base with this one. Legions of Moore fans really, really want to see the pirates comic from WATCHMEN included in the movie. But the movie is already running very long, even without the major digression that was the pirates.
ReplyDeleteHaving a pirates only DVD allows Zach to keep the fanboys happy while not gumming up the main narrative with seemingly off-topic stuff.