WI Terry Gilliam makes a movie adaption of the Watchman

This is before the IOTL Synder adaption of course.

And I have no idea how he gets the funding to do this, or even if he would be interested.

This may belong in the ASB folder. But it might be a fun discussion.
 
Ok. Now it occurs to me you are refering to the adaptation of the Robert Crais novel? Or am I wrong & it is 'The Watchmen' the Marvel Comics thing by Higgins, Moore & Gibbons?
 
Ok, so a missspelling. The Crais novel has some elements that lends the story to Gilliams themes of alienation of the individual & distortion of the social fabric.
 
Yeah, I caught that from your first post, but between the spelling in the title & the adaptabiity of the themes it was not clear when I read the OP ect...

Getting back to the OP question Gilliam would do a fair job of it. I supose that as usual the hard core fans would be upset because it did not fit their vision, but you have that.
 
The script that Gilliam was going to work with had this terrible, very confusing ending, and I don't think it would gone over very well.
 
It could have worked.if he had made the movie in yhe early 1990's, certainly not later then 1995. An important aspect of the comics is the 1980's cold war mindset, the idea that it is 'five minutes to midnight' and the Great Nuclear Exchange could blow us back to the stone age any moment. As much as I like the OTL movie, it just came out too late, to be watched by a generation that never got the meaning of the song '99 Luftbalons' playing in the background at the first meeting between Night Owl and Silhouette.

Bonus points if Gilliam mamages to.release the movie in 1991 either during or just after the first Gulf War. OTL Nato and half of the former Warsaw Pact ending the cold war by joining up to clobber Saddam Hussein might bring unintended poignancy to the book/movie plot of the US and Russia ending the cold war by uniting against a makebelieve threat from a makebelieve alien space monster.
 
The script that Gilliam was going to work with had this terrible, very confusing ending, and I don't think it would gone over very well.

Hopefully he'd have enough control to have the ending rewritten. That happens fairly often in the cinema business. A lot of movies have the endings shot two different ways before the final copy is distributed.
 
I don't know the Gilliam script, but Watchmen is an highly unfilmable comic and frankly Snyder version is probably the best that we can have
 

Puzzle

Donor
I don't know the Gilliam script, but Watchmen is an highly unfilmable comic and frankly Snyder version is probably the best that we can have
CGI alone makes a lot of things possible that weren't before. It isn't sufficient to make things good, but it's an incredibly powerful tool for a director.
 
Hopefully he'd have enough control to have the ending rewritten. That happens fairly often in the cinema business. A lot of movies have the endings shot two different ways before the final copy is distributed.
I don't know the Gilliam script, but Watchmen is an highly unfilmable comic and frankly Snyder version is probably the best that we can have

Here's a synopsis of the script (I'm sure the actual script is somewhere online), if you want to read: http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/Watchmen_(unused_Sam_Hamm_script)

You know, at first, I didn't think the Squid would work on film, but after reading vultan's excellent TL The Power and the Glitter, I realize that it could work, if done correctly. In that TL, James Cameron (who directed a version made in 1994) has the squid go on a giant-monster rampage through New York before the US Army takes it down. That would fit into the 60's retro sensibility of the work.
 

Archibald

Banned
Terry Gilliam is a former Monty Python and (quite surprisingly) his movies are bleak and depressing (see Brazil).
The running joke with Gilliam was that at some point every single movie he atempted ended in a disaster - storms, earthquake, dying actors, and the like ruined a string of movies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Killed_Don_Quixote
I think Gilliam bleak atmospheres and tones would fit very well with watchmen. Brazil is very dystopian.
 
I don't know the Gilliam script, but Watchmen is an highly unfilmable comic and frankly Snyder version is probably the best that we can have

I'll have to find a copy of the Snyder version. All I've seen of the Watchmen recently is a partially animated version with voice over.

I'd suspect that if a small part of the Watchmen comic were worked into a story/script for a movie it would probablly work better. Leave the broader story visible as background, but focus on a one subplot to keep it tight and practical.
 
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