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Is Watchmen the Next Dark Knight?
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Warner Bros. / Everett Collection
The brilliant graphic novel has a cult following. The director is coming off a surprise blockbuster. But just how high can this super-noir superhero movie fly?
Beware the follow-up to a blockbuster. Institutionally risk-averse, Hollywood studios fall over themselves to grab the next project after a hot movie director delivers a surprise smash. But that’s exactly when they should exercise extreme caution. Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, based on Alan Moore’s 1986 meta-superhero comic-book series, is yet another case of a studio willing to overlook the big-budget rulebook in order to get in bed with a filmmaker fresh off a global moneymaker. “Whenever you have a big hit with somebody,” says producer James Jacks (The Mummy), “you don’t want to let them go. The studio is going to throw out their usual due diligence.”
Directors never have more freedom to take ambitious risks than after a blockbuster. And studios, it seems, just can’t say no. They indulge directors such as Michael Cimino—after the Oscar-winning Deer Hunter, his big-budget western “Heaven’s Gate” literally brought down United Artists. After the blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy, Universal gave Peter Jackson $20 million against 20 percent of the gross to co-write, direct, co-produce, and deliver effects for King Kong; the three-hour epic cost $202 million, and the studio barely came out ahead. And after the Matrix movies, the Wachowskis, who directed, stumbled with their own Alan Moore project, producing the disappointing V for Vendetta—and then wrote and directed the disastrous Speed Racer.
Watchmen is R-rated, not only for its bone-crunching violence, but for Dr. Manhattan’s frontal nudity and hot sex scenes between Patrick Wilson’s Nite Owl (who can’t get an erection unless he’s wearing his costume).
Warners jumped into the Moore universe again with Watchmen because two years ago, Snyder’s $60 million blue-screen action epic 300, based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae, opened to $70 million and grossed an astonishing $456 million worldwide. Wanting to line up Snyder’s next movie, studio executives Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov greenlit Watchmen, even after years of development hell at two studios and false starts from the likes of Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass. (Twentieth Century Fox and Warners finally settled their court battle over the rights a few months ago.)
While Warner Bros. allowed Snyder to go for an R-rating and cast relative unknowns, after the director handed in a three-hour rough cut, the studio thought Watchmen was "too long, too sexy, and too violent," Snyder said during San Diego’s virally powerful Comic-Con convention. For him, "that's a reason to go. That's the why. If you take that out you take out the why.” Snyder didn’t want to deliver a "watered down version of Watchmen,” he said. “Then you might as well make another superhero movie. There are a million characters out there you could do instead."
In the end, Warner Bros. got 161 minutes and very few trims. (Accommodations were made on both sides, according to sources close to the studio.) And Snyder got his faithful, violent, sexy, operatic movie—complete with Philip Glass on the soundtrack.
There’s good reason why Alan Moore has long insisted that his intellectual, referential, flashback-ridden graphic novels—which have inspired passionate followers for decades, not to mention narrative groundbreakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Lost creator J.J. Abrams—should not be simplified into filmed action fare. He’s 0 for 3 in Hollywood: So far V for Vendetta, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen all got lost in translation to film.
Warners’ financial partner Legendary Pictures and foreign distributor Paramount are banking that Watchmen could break Moore’s losing streak. Produced at a cost of more than $120 million (plus some $100 million in global marketing costs), Watchmen opens today in 3,611 theaters in North America, more than any other R-rated movie in history.
The movie is expected to open big this weekend, perhaps between $60 and $70 million. The question that makes Warner Bros. nervous: Will it continue to play? By slavishly honoring the comic (which devoted 12 chapters to 12 “superheroes” in an alternative 1980s universe), Snyder departed radically from studio comic-movie conventions. First, Watchmen, unlike iconic superheroes such as Batman, Superman, Spider-man, even the X-Men, is not a widely recognized pop-culture brand. It’s a cult phenomenon. However, in the nine months since the trailer broke to rave reactions at Comic-Con, Snyder recently noted that the book has sold more than 2 million copies: The $20 paperback currently tops the New York Times’ new graphic novel bestseller list. That’s a serious sign of crossover potential. But the book has gone over best in North America and the UK. Foreign markets are less primed for the title.
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Anne Thompson launched the daily ThompsononHollywood blog in March 2007, when she joined Variety as a columnist. Previously, she was deputy film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, where she wrote the weekly syndicated column "Risky Business" and the Riskybizblog. She has also served as west coast editor of Premiere and Film Comment, and senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.
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Anne Thompson launched the daily ThompsononHollywood blog in March 2007, when she joined Variety as a columnist. Previously, she was deputy film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, where she wrote the weekly syndicated column "Risky Business" and the Riskybizblog. She has also served as west coast editor of Premiere and Film Comment, and senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.
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Anne Thompson launched the daily ThompsononHollywood blog in March 2007, when she joined Variety as a columnist. Previously, she was deputy film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, where she wrote the weekly syndicated column "Risky Business" and the Riskybizblog. She has also served as west coast editor of Premiere and Film Comment, and senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.
citivas
Please. You can't be serious, right? No one really expects this movie to gross even a fraction of what the Dark Knight did. If they did, they wouldn't have dumped it in March. They are just hoping it will repeat 300, if they are lucky. It will almost certainly handily win the weekend box office results, but that isn't saying much. They are just hoping to make their oney back on this one and then hopefully do great on video...
lastcookie
Watch Speedracer on Blu-Ray and a capable screen and you won't diss it again.
What do you want, everything all the time?
Sergio
Great piece Anne. Hope this means you'll be a regular coumnist for daily Beast
finderj
Watchmen is a fantastic, disturbing graphic novel. Perhaps there are more young people out there willing to be challenged to think that you know. They are the ones who will be watching this movie.
newyorkcity
I was at one of those sold-out midnight showings... one of the best experiences I have ever had in a theater. Watchmen is unlike any movie to have hit the big screen-- it does have that same surreal feeling that 300 had, but the complexities of the characters run so deep, and the premise is staggeringly visionary. I just wish that IMAX hadn't been sold out a week in advance.
citivas
finderj, I am well versed in the graphic novel and plan to see the movie myself. But I stick by my prediction -- the movie won't do close to The Dark Knight, not even close... And frankly the main audience for the comics/later graphic novel are not that "young." nd if you added up 100 percent of the people who have actually read the Watchmen, it still wouldn't make for a "Dark Knight" sized audience.
The movie should do great this weekend because it is the only thing remotely like it out in the most boring season for movie releases. That's exactly why they put it here. But they also know that if they have a real blockbuster on their hands, you put it in summer when people are bored and have time on their hands and go to see movies over and over. That's how you get a Dark Knight-level hit. Only "Titanic" among the top grossing movies was not a summer hit.
maxpower1013
Just saw it last night. Never read the graphic novel, but this movie was incredible nonetheless. I'm betting it will make 100 mil this weekend
zombiefairy
March is the appropriate time to release Watchmen because the content is too just dark for a summer release. Dark Knight was also dark, but the bad guys went down, and the viewer didn't have to question who the bad guys were. Watchmen isn't so simple.
I also don't know that I would call it's following "cult". Batman has instant name recognition because he's been around for so long and in so many productions (comics, tv, movies, cartoons, etc). Just because something is off the radar of the average suburban mom, doesn't classify it as cult.
DixonSteele
Anne, you may be right about the film versions of FROM HELL and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, but I wasn't alone in thinking that V FOR VENDETTA was superb, whatever it grossed.
Also, as much as I like them, when did Paltrow and Bridges become "eminently bankable"?
zombiefairy
Asking if Watchmen is the next Dark Knight is an idiotic question, one which indicates that this writer has only passing familiarity with such films. One comic book film is not the same as the other. We're dealing with two radically different concepts with Watchmen and the Dark Knight. Watchmen isn't so much about heroes and heroism as it is about questioning heroes and heroism. With Dark Knight, you know you who the good guy is, who the bad guy is, and why it's important to thwart his plans. Watchmen isn't so clear. It's a difficult movie, one that isn't suited to the frivolity of summer releases.
In more conventional terms, you could say that, comparatively, Dark Knight is the Godfather of comic book movies, while Watchmen is the Charlie Kaufman library of comic book movies.
citivas
Saw in in IMAX last night. Really liked it, though the desire to be so loyal to the source made it a little longer than necessary. I agree it will do great opening weekend and should have the box office to itself for a while but it still won't be in Dark Knight $500 million domestic box office league...
sonofloud
Dark Knight sucked.
They have yet to find anyone that can even come close to Mark Hamill's brilliant portrayal of the Joker in the animated Batman series.
They should have called it "Batman moves to Gotham".
mbgillil
Whew. I do believe you sat in that movie theater for nearly three hours and managed to completely miss the point.
@sonofloud - Mark Hamill and the rest of the cast of TAS were amazing, but as an even darker translation to the silver screen Heath Ledger acted the character perfectly. It was the Joker from the darker iterations of the comic personified. If they had wanted the joker from TAS, Mark Hamill still would have been a great choice.
finderj
I dunno. Watchmen probably won't outgross Dark Knight, but that may not be a result of content, but rather of marketing and marketability. Rather cynical, but had Ledger not died, Dark Knight might not have grossed what it did. The fact that it is an excellently well-made film, with stellar performances and effects, is irrelevant to the fact that one of its stars died, in a shocking and terribly publicized manner. Many people cannot resist rubbernecking. Human nature. watchmen has no such lurid publicity.
zombiefairy
@ finderji By that logic, The Crow should have been huge I mean, Brandon Lee died DURING filming. But, The Crow wasn't huge, Lee wasn't nominated for an Oscar, and The Crow remains a cult film.
After seeing Ledger in the role of The Joker, I'm confident that he would have been nominated whether he had died or not, The Dark Knight would have been huge whether he had died or not. He was nothing short of genius in the role.
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