Snyder To Helm Watchmen

Source: SciFi Wire

Zach Snyder has come aboard to develop and direct Watchmen, a movie based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal DC Comics graphic superhero novel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Warner Brothers is financing the long-gestating movie, which Alex Tse is writing and Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin are producing.

Watchmen has a development history almost as epic as the story the comic tells, the trade paper reported. The project has seen such studios as Fox, Universal and Paramount come and go and has seduced and vexed such filmmakers as Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass and screenwriter David Hayter.

Sources told the trade paper that Snyder impressed Warner with 300, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel, which he directed and co-wrote. Snyder shot the movie, a Greek epic about the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., on soundstages in Montreal, using partial sets and green screens, similar in technique to Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. Snyder also directed the 2004 hit Dawn of the Dead.

Watchmen is one of the most critically acclaimed series in the genre and is a crime-conspiracy story that provided the first realistic look at the behind-the-heroics lives of superhero archetypes.