Lloyd Levin, one of the producers of WATCHMEN, breaks his silence to speak of the film’s arduous path to the screen. As you might guess, he thinks Fox is being a real dog in the manger here.
After 9/11 some felt the story’s themes were too close to reality ever to be palatable to a mainstream audience.
There were those who considered the project but who wished it were somehow different: Could it be a buddy movie, or a team-up movie or could it focus on one main character; did it have to be so dark; did so many people have to die; could it be stripped of its flashback structure; could storylines be eliminated; could new storylines be invented; did it have to be so long; could the blue guy put clothes on… The list of dissatisfactions for what Watchmen is was as endless as the list of suggestions to make it something it never was.
Also endless are the list of studio rejections we accrued over the years. Larry and I developed screenplays at five different studios. We had two false starts in production on the movie. We were involved with prominent and commercial directors. Big name stars were interested. In one instance hundreds of people were employed, sets were being built – An A-list director and top artists in the industry were given their walking papers when the studio financing the movie lost faith.
After all these years of rejection, this is the same project, the same movie, over which two studios are now spending millions of dollars contesting ownership. Irony indeed, and then some.
The biggest irony of all is Moore’s work is grounded in the school of thought which sees a foolish and arrogant mankind, subject to unpredictable, random events. Hopefully The Black Swan won’t tell this world a killing joke.