Watching the Watchmen can be exhausting!

After putting out several hundred trailers with slight variations, creating a vast slew of "official" posters, animating the Black Freighter subplot and bundling it as an extra DVD along with a movie adaptation of Under the Hood (the first Nite Owl's tell-all book), publishing an art book, and creating The New Frontiersman Web site and viral content, the marketing people behind the Watchmen movie looked around and said, "You know what we're missing? A rip-off of a retro-style video game!" So, they made MinuteMen, a Double Dragon-esque game complete with an 8-bit soundtrack. You can play as either the first Nite Owl or the first Silk Spectre, as you kick and punch your way to defeating Moloch's gang (watch out, he has mystic knives!). It's absurdly easy (hint: they can't hit you if they're stuck behind the trash cans), and it only takes a few minutes (assuming you don't suck). But with the massive amount of hype you've already ingested, what's your incentive to play the game? Getting to see yet another slight variation of the trailer when you win.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Published on February 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Cullers, Video games, Watchmen

Watching the 'Watchmen' viral ad campaign

Now that Fox has walked away from its lawsuit with some sweet, sweet receipts, Warner Bros. is free to ramp up its Watchmen marketing just in time for the March opening. Warner has created a Web site for The New Frontiersman, the fictional right-wing conspiracy 'zine beloved by Rorschach. The awesome old-school NBS video report, purported to be from 1970, excites me in ways I can't publicly admit. Of course, that's nothing compared to what the Silk Silhouette pinup in the folder does to me. Though it resembles 42 Entertainment's Dark Knight viral campaign (a lot of entertainment marketing has been for fictional products and services lately), the design is actually courtesy of The PPC Group. The New Frontiersman will be updating until the release. You can catch them on Twitter, too, if you want up-to-the-minute leads on conspiracy theories from an imagined alternate history. It's my hope that Warner is willing to truly make the fiction of Watchmen into reality. Please, heed my ranting e-mail and make sure that at midnight in New York the night before the release, a flash mob of thousands pelts Madison Square Garden with squid bits!

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Published on January 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Cullers, Watchmen

'Watchmen,' 'Potter' geeks start to squirm

Twentieth Century Fox is suing Warner Bros., claiming it owns the rights to Watchmen (rights which it apparently bought in the 1980s and failed to use) and seeking an injunction to stop production of the film. At the moment, there's no reason to doubt the film will come out on time. Fox is most likely just looking to squeeze some cash out of Warner, like producer Robert Clark did over disputed rights to Warner's Dukes of Hazzard film. And if it is pushed back, that won't be the end of the world, right? I mean, all those Harry Potter fans are taking the eight-month delay on Warner's next installment of that series pretty well. Except those calling for protests and boycotts, that is. To try to mitigate that situation, Warner is giving Potter's original release date (Nov. 21) to Twilight, an adaption of Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire romance. Do I even need to tell you it's horrible? It's a teen vampire romance. If I were a teenage girl, I would be dying to see it. Since I am full-grown comic-book geek, I'm joining a Facebook group instead. It's called NOOOO! Don't Let F***ing Fox Stop Watchmen!

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Published on August 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Controversy, Cullers, Watchmen

'Watchmen' trailer isn't music to our ears

The comic-book-movie genre has an interesting problem: Rabid fansters want their beloved heroes adapted faithfully on screen, right down to the minutiae. The makers of Watchmen the movie, based on the celebrated graphic novel by Alan Moore, have been doing a good job with the costumes, keeping the changes minimal and the fans happy. But the trailer, which was just released, has this rabid fanster peeved to the point of foaming, merely by the choice of music. They had five perfectly good songs to choose from that Alan Moore used in the book. But no, they pick “The End Is the Beginning Is the End” by the Smashing Pumpkins. Didn’t anybody get the memo after Corgan formed Zwan? More important, the song was written about Batman for the movie Batman and Robin. Did they think comic-book geeks wouldn’t notice something like that? Perhaps they’re banking on them paying closer attention to the Watchmen Veidt Enterprises ad contest (which has some winners) or making their own versions of the trailer, with musical selections that aren’t much better.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Published on July 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (85)
Filed under Cullers, Watchmen

'Watchmen' ads begin with the costumes

Costumes for the upcoming Watchmen movie have hit the Internet, the first salvo in the marketing campaign (aside from the teaser poster). And holy crap, does Rorschach look awesome. The other characters have been altered a bit (Nite Owl looks like Batman if his cowl were wilting), but the Comedian (shown here) and Rorschach were kept pretty close to the original artwork. And the changes made aren’t a Dolph Lundgren job by any stretch. For the unfamilar, Watchmen is yet another Alan Moore graphic novel filled with moral ambiguity and general awesomeness (he also wrote From Hell and V for Vendetta), so the movie is bound to be good. In fact, the only thing more entertaining than the movie will be Moore’s reasons for hating it.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Published on March 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Kiefaber, Watchmen