Harry here, and I'm going to remain completely fucking calm here. David Hayter, who was credited with sole writing credit of X-MEN, which considering everyone that really worked on that script is kinda funny... Who wrote a terrible HULK script... Apparently a pretty good PITCH BLACK 2 script (according to Vin Diesel's published reports)... Well he feels that he's in the perfect position to bring WATCHMEN to the screen. Not only as writer, but also as director. His first concept is to boil down, what is generally held as the greatest work of illustrated storytelling into a single 2 hour film.

Also, he apparently feels this is the perfect project to get his feet wet as director. AAAAAAAAACKKKKK!!!!

Ok, now let's take a look at this. On one hand, there's Terry Gilliam... GENIUS... Who wants to make an 8 hour epic out of the WATCHMEN story. Who happens to be a GENIUS.

Then there's Hayter, who has directed Jack and Shit, polished a turd into a pretty cool superhero flick (albeit with the assistance of Singer and DeSanto) that could've been LOADS more cool if the studio had let it. My God.... The mind reels!

WATCHMEN is THE epic Comic Film Series. It is not a 2 hour movie by a first time director. It is a series by a director at his pinnacle... Not one for a scrub. This is possibly the worst news I've read in months... Well at the very least, the resulting mass of turds will not affect my love of the original genius that Moore gave us! Here's the scoop...

Hi Harry,

Long time reader, first time poster.

Today I moderated a panel at the Vancouver International Film Festival Trade Forum. The topic was "Sequential Art and Film." Our guest speaker was David Hayter, screenwriter of XMen 1 and 2 and The Incredible Hulk. He was quite loquacious and witty. Among his interesting tidbits were these items which I figured would leak to you somehow, so it might as well be me:

1. On XMen, the filmmakers would always print out the AICN Talkbacks and fret over the criticisms they were getting in anticipation of their movie. I thought your Talkbackers would find this empowering. I hope they do not abuse this power!

2. Hayter has been on a year-long roll. As the flavour-of-the-moment screenwriter on all things comic book, he is negotiating to write and direct Watchmen. He thinks he can pull it off as a two-hour movie which is faithful to the spirit and the plot of Alan Moore's work (which he describes as one of the greatest novels ever written), although, obviously, the telling would have to be much more focused; the pirate stories would have to be jettisoned, for example.

Anyway, I hope that was interesting.

call me...KZINTI

A reader just pointed me to The Last Comic Site where Patrick Sauriol was the first to report on the story that WATCHMEN was being made by Hayter. He also mentions that the "Tales of the Black Freighter" will instantly be jettisoned from the film.... Well of course it'll be jettisoned. That was just a story element that was laced throughout the entire series for 'no particular reason'. I mean, it wasn't like it was a parallel, that when held next to the primary story, gave irony and a layer of depth that it would have otherwise been missing. Of course you'd just cut that all out. That's brilliant. Soooper smart. Genius.