Corona | Coming Attractions

Latino Review claims that it knows for sure which actress has been cast as the second Silk Spectre in Watchmen. According to the website it's Malin Akerman, the Swedish-born eye-catcher that appeared in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. She will also be seen in the new Ben Stiller comedy The Heartbreak Kid, out this October.

If Akerman does indeed have the part she will be the daughter of the original Silk Spectre who also becomes the romantic companion of Dr. Manhattan.

According to a "very reliable source" that CHUD knows, Billy Crudup has been selected to play the part of Doctor Manhattan/Jon Osterman in Watchmen. Crudup has starred in such films as Mission: Impossible III, Almost Famous, Charlotte Gray and Without Limits. The site expects that an official announcement about Crudup will be made at Comic Con later this month.

Seeking to find out if there are indeed any substance behind the rumors that he's been eyed to play Nite Owl II, Coming Soon used its opportunity to interview Patrick Wilson to ask the actor if the stories are indeed true. "I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this stuff," the Little Children star said, dodging around giving a straight answer. "It's been confirmed on a lot of websites, I'll just say that."

British actor Paddy Considine had been slated to play the part of Rorschach when Paul Greengrass was the director of Watchmen. Now that Greengrass' vision of the film is nothing more than a pipe dream and Considine no longer associated with the part, it's ironic that the place where we learn who is the next actor assigned to play the role is Considine's website.

The British actor claims that an offer has been made to Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach. Haley began his movie career by playing tough kid roles in such films as the original The Bad News Bears, Breaking Away and Damnation Alley before his star power faded in the 1980s and 1990s. He returned to visibility after delivering a powerful performance as convicted child molestor Ronnie J. McGorvey in Todd Field's 2006 film Little Children. He was also seen in All the King's Men and has been cast in the Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro, out next year.

After watching his latest film 300 shatter the opening weekend record  for March, Comic Book Resources sat down to interview Zack Snyder and see where his head was following the film's box office triumph. Of course, CBR couldn't resist asking Snyder about how things were progressing on Watchmen, but did the site's interviewer know that he could get a ton of info about it?

First off, Snyder confirmed to CBR that Watchmen would be his next project: "That's what we're focusing all our attention on," he spills. "Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I feel like Watchmen is the coolest thing ever and I have to do it."

Snyder is currently hammering out a budget that the film's owners, Warner Bros. can agree on. "We're trying to get something together to show the studio right now and we're hoping to get that as low as we can," he explains, suggesting that he knows a way to make the film so that it will budgeted closer to $100 million dollars instead of the $150 million that Snyder originally thought something of Watchmen's scope would cost. "The reality is that it's still an R rated movie, it's an R rated super hero movie, something that's never been tested before and no one knows what the hell that means. But I think if you went to see 300, I would hope that you'd go see Watchmen."

The Dawn of the Dead remake helmer also explained how that now famous test shot of Rorschach that was secretly embedded in the YouTube trailer for 300 came to be. "I did that shot with a couple of friends a long time ago. Grant Freckelton, who was the visual effects art director on 300, and we were sitting around and I shot a picture of Wesley Coller, one of the associate producers on 300, in the trench coat and I said, 'Hey, let's knock this up!' That's what we'd say when we'd create a frame for 300. So, I said I wanted to do this Watchmen frame and I did this little doodle with the moon here, the Empire State building over here, some atmosphere, stuff like that. Grant did it in like an hour, there's no grain on it, it's just a quicky and I thought it was cool. I had it as my screen saver on my computer for a while. [laughs] People would be looking over my shoulder saying, 'Wow, what the hell is that?'"

It was also learned that Astonishing X-Men comic book artist John Cassaday is doing conceptual design for the picture (" I don't know if I'd necessarily call it costume design so much as concepts, just to see what they'd come up," said Snyder), howmuch Snyder is leaning to have the costumes worn by the comic book's heroes reproduced verbatim on the screen ("Night Owl will be pretty close, but we're trying to make him look a little scarier,") and that it doesn't look like Tom Cruise is going to commit to playing Ozymandias in the movie ("We've had a lot of great conversations about it and he's a bit of a "Watchmen" fan now, but I don't think he'll do it.") For loads more, read the full interview with Comic Book Resources.

While speaking with Newsarama to promote his upcoming animated film Hellboy: Blood & Iron, actor Ron Perlman causally dropped the news into the conversation that, at one point, he was being considered for the part of the Comedian. "Watchmen came up because [Hellboy producers] Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin have the rights to make the film version of that," Perlman explains. "They were pushing for me to play the Comedian."

Not all watchers of an extended trailer for 300 released exclusively on YouTube may have caught a brief flash of something that looked out of the ordinary. Of those that did, how many were knowledgeable about Watchmen to identify a masked Rorschach skulking around the nighttime vista of a New York City street scene?

The blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment arrives 1:52 into the trailer and is likely a shout out to fans of Watchmen who are eagerly anticipating seeing Zack Snyder's next movie after 300. You might as well start building the hype early.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Zack Snyder is the new director of the long-stalled Watchmen film project. According to unnamed sources that the Reporter cites, the early form of Snyder's forthcoming adaptation of 300 (based on the comic book by Frank Miller) gave Warner Bros. executives the confidence to put him at the helm of the movie. Alex Tse (Bleach, Sucker Free City) will write a new screenplay while Lloyd Levin and Lawrence Gordon remain onboard as producers.

While interviewing Zack Snyder in the editing room where the director was assembling his latest film, AICN's Moriarty landed a huge scoop another what Snyder may be moving to after wrapping on 300: Snyder was going to meet with the producers of Watchmen shortly and discuss the possibility of adapting the legendary Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comic book series into a movie. Now Moriarty has reported that Snyder has indeed entered into contract negotiations with Warner Bros. to direct Watchmen.

"I've always said that Watchmen had the right producers and writer attached, and I think there have been some interesting directors (Aronofsky and Greengrass) attached to it in the last few years," Moriarty reports. "But with Snyder, I think the Watchmen may have finally found the perfect guy for the job, and I am absolutely rabid to see what he's going to do."

As a part of their six-page summary of the development of the Watchmen movie to date ("Watchmen: An Oral History"), Entertainment Weekly has uncovered a new glimmer of hope that the troubled project may have found a new home. IGN notes that Watchmen producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Leven are currently in discussions with Warner Bros. to bring the property to them to develop as a feature film. "We have every reason to believe we will eventually make the movie," Gordon told the magazine.

If Watchmen does wind up at Warner Bros. it will be somewhat returning back to its original home. The movie studio is owned by Time Warner which also owns DC Comics, the publisher of the Watchmen comic book.

Paramount Pictures has placed Watchmen in turnaround, effectively ending the project's development at that studio.

Screen Daily (by way of IGN) reports that the Watchmen production may be considering not shooting at Pinewood Studios over concerns of the film's $120 million dollar budget and Paramount's insistence to lower costs. According to producer Lloyd Levin, Paramount is skittish due to the high value of the British pound over the American dollar which will drive up the costs of shooting the picture in England. Another factor that may add additional trouble is a recent change in Paramount management. Could the movie studio now be getting a case of cold feet?

CHUD's Devin Faraci has done a script review of a 2003 draft of Watchmen done by David Hayter, giving it a relatively positive endorsement. "Hayter's script hits all the character, story and action beats of the graphic novel, while keeping most of the thematic elements intact," writes Faraci. "Lifting dialogue and scenes directly from the original, Hayter's script is a perfect roadmap for a director with the vision to fill in the blanks and create a vibrant and realistic world around these characters. Let's hope Paul Greengrass is that guy - with this script (or an even improved version of it) and the right vision, he could bring us the Watchmen film we've been hoping for for the last twenty years."

Following up on last week's story that appeared on Ain't It Cool News, The Hollywood Reporter confirms that director Paul Greengrass is indeed the new man for Paramount's Watchmen movie. The draft done by X-Men screenwriter David Hayter is still listed as the latest working screenplay for the film. The studio is anxious to get the ball moving on the film and wants to make it one of their summer releases in 2006.

Ain't It Cool News was the first to break word that The Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass is the new man working on Paramount Pictures' screen adaptation of Watchmen. Greengrass replaces Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky who exited the project last month to focus on completing his next project, the science fiction love story The Fountain.

Some of Greengrass's other credits include the 2002 drama Bloody Sunday and The Theory of Flight. His Supremacy sequel netted more than $170 million at the box office this past summer, making it the biggest film so far in the Matt Damon spy film franchise.