Little Panel, Big Screen

During my interwebs surfing , I've come across two little chunks of comic-to-movie adaptation newslets that seem to beg some kind of comment: I don't have to remind my 4 readers how I feel about the whole comic-book to movie thing (Why...are...you....doing this?!), but I feel like the announcements are large enough to at least recognize.

The first is Zac Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's The Watchmen, something that I (and many others) would argue is the comic book that matured comic books: even Maus, since it's basically a biography, doesn't carry the heavy narrative weight that Moore's and Gibbons opus does. The Watchmen is basically the first movie released as a comic book first, which is why I actually have high hopes for it: unlike other comic books that are too fantastical or too intimate to make a good movie, The Watchmen reads like a movie from the beginning: the pacing, the framing, even the action, all seems made from production stills. I loathed Snyder's 300, but here's a (admittedly old) transcript of his talk that seems to show he at least has a lot of respect for the material. Below is also a rad graphic showing the casting options for the last two times The Watchmen was considering for Hollywood, as well as the most recent iteration. I personally think the casting of Ron Perlman as The Comedian would be brilliant (second only to Mel Gibson), but that's just me.



The second little piece of "Holy-shit-it's-really-happening" news released this week is that Spielberg has seemingly found his Tintin.

(sounds of shotgun being removed from gun rack)

The movies are slated to be all original scripts...

(sounds of shotgun cartridges being loaded into shotgun)

...with a lot of money attached to them; Spielberg is slated to direct the first, Peter Jackson the second, and as-yet-to-be-determined hot young director to helm the third...

(click-CLACK!)

and they will all be motion-captured CGI films. Hooray!

(BLAM!)