Alan Moore Refuses Rights to Watchmen

[Bloodstain]

We need more people like Alan Moore in this world.

 

[voetballeeuw]

I respect Moore's decision. Watchmen's finished.

 

[SimuLord]

Hey, he's kinda like Rorshach.


"Never compromise!"

Or like Hieronymus Lex. Never compromise, never blink, never stop trying to make this a better city for everyone.

 

[ninja51]

The guys kinda crazy, and he hates all movies with a passion for some reason, but i'll give him credit for saying no to some bullshit cash-in stuff. I liked the watchmen movie alot, have never read the comics, and im fine with that being the last I hear of the series. Not much point in a sequal or prequal anyway, it would just be a strung together cash grab

 

[UnravThreads]

While I can respect a man with integrity, Alan Moore is an ass. If I understand correctly, Mr. Moore was so adamant that the Watchman shouldn't be made into a movie that he essentially wrote the bizarre ending the comic book had to make it impossible to adapt into a movie. Although I certainly agree that some things shouldn't be taken out of their original medium, his approach to this is so fucking over-dramatic and to betray the story over a minor thing like that is just ridiculous.
This whole "I don't want anything to do with comics" comes off sounding like a whiny child to me. A true storyteller would be more concerned with what's important to the story rather than what people do with it afterward. Hollywood being the factory of broken dreams that it is, you can't dissuade them from doing stupid things and it's rather pointless to try.

He's batshit crazy. Watchmen was a perfectly good film that, in my eyes, complimented the graphic novel perfectly well. I got both on the same day (Yay, Christmas!) and I watched the film when I was maybe halfway through the graphic novel, and aside from the "visual tones" (the movie was a lot darker), it felt like a comic book that had come to life - Just as 300 did.

I've not read V for Vendetta, but I've got the film and I quite enjoyed it.

 

[ucciolord1]

Alan Moore has true artistic integrity. I wish I could be even half the badass he is.

 

[Albino Boo]

I like Alan Moore stuff by and large, but I'm not a fan boi. I would like to say the Alan More is a full blown hippy nutjob, who lost any connection with the real world some time ago. He spends he time practicing magic and producing female empowering softporn comics with his partner. He can afford to be high and mighty about the rights whilst not a mutli-millionaire DC et al didn't pay in shiny beads but with large amounts of real money. The guy isn't living on the bread line but rather comfortably in Northampton.

 

[Break]

"The comics world has lots of unpleasant connections, when I think back over it, many of them to do with Watchmen," he said.

I don't quite understand what he means here.

Anyone care to elaborate?

As some people have already said, he was more or less responsible for the trend of gritty, realistic, emotionally-broken superheroes - I'm told that one of his motivations with Watchmen was to take the stagnating superhero concept and take it somewhere new, to try and remind the industry that there were other things to do with the genre than courageous all-American supermen Saving The Day. When he realised what people actually took from Watchmen ("dark comics are cool!") it did not make him happy. Rather than inspiring people to try and do more fresh, interesting, exciting things with superheroes, the comic mainstream just adopted a bunch of film noir cliches, and started beating those dead horses instead.

Moreover, DC really screwed him over, with the Watchmen comic books. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I think that their contract was that DC would hold the rights to Watchmen for its first production run, after which the rights would be transfered to Moore. Except that the first production run, to this day, has not ended. They just kept printing copies. There might've been some related problem with the royalties, as well - the point is, he was treated badly, and so developed a grudge against DC, which threw a few spanners in the works of any attempts towards compromise.

Really, I'm not so sure it's about "refusing to compromise ideals", or "not being tempted by the money", or "wanting to leave Watchmen as a standalone piece", and I think people are a little too eager to laud him for such. I think it's as he says: he doesn't want anything to do with Watchmen. His experiences have left a bad taste in his mouth. He's sick of the franchise. He's not interested in contributing anything more. It's not so much about his ideals, rather that he just wants to be done with the whole thing.

In other words, he just might be the antithesis of George Lucas. Huh.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

good for him
in my opinion it's better to a poor man then a rich whore

Money may not buy happiness but I'd rather cry in a ferrari.

Why, you can cry without a ferrari. It's a little more honest, too.
Besides, if you want to commit suicide, you don't need money to build a bridge to jump from first.
And Alan Moore is just some guy who writes comics and is apparently pissed off at someone. Probably George Lucas, I dunno.
And I didn't even like Rorsach. He was just kinda silly.

 

[Kair]

Is the plot in the film Watchmen the same as written by Alan Moore?

In that case, I am not surprised that he is not interested in monetary pursuit.

If by the same you mean 'adapted from his work', then yes, otherwise, Moore had no involvement with the making of the movie or it's script. Come to think of it, he's had no involvement with any any productions based on work he either wrote or was involved with, i.e. V For Vendetta or From Hell.

Yes but is the basic plot and the characters the same?

The story is pretty much the same, as are the themes, although how they're presented is slightly worse in the film, in my opinion. The film has been trimmed to simply get it into a feasible running time and there is an aesthetic difference at certain parts (most notably at the end) but apart from that there isn't too much difference narrative-wise.

It is the message that is important, and that stayed completely intact. I think it is a beautiful film. The story and characters of Watchmen are carefully crafted, and the moral complexity punches you in the face like no other film I have seen.

Hey, he's kinda like Rorshach.

"Never compromise!"

That certainly explains why the craziest character in the book got the most beautiful lines!

I don't know if it's easy to figure out, but Rorschach, with all his flaws, is the protagonist/hero in Watchmen. He might be one of Alan's more carefully written characters.

 

[dashiz94]

Is the plot in the film Watchmen the same as written by Alan Moore?

In that case, I am not surprised that he is not interested in monetary pursuit.

No, it isn't. For the most part yes, but Alan wrote Watchmen in a way that can't be portrayed in a movie or a game. Zack Snyder did a decent job of translating it into a movie, but he was forced to take out certain parts of the book because it wouldn't work for the film.

 

[2fish]

Why are they still bugging him? I got his message when he refused to have his name put on the movie. The graphic Novel is my favorite, the movie was pretty good. I am afraid of any other movies that come out with the title Watchmen.

Also Rorschach is all about his integrity and refuses to give up, sound like someone to you?

Hint: refusing to take movies rights he doesn't want.

 

[Jared]

Well. Ill give him his due. He knows what he wants...and knows what he dosnt want...but, he really dosnt want the rights back to something like this? Well...his choice. I think its quite admirable of him to do that

 

[The Kraken]

George Lucas can learn something from this man.

This is the perfect example of why more Watchmen should not be made, and Moore understands this.

 

[Beastialman]

Is it me or does this guy seem like a whiny little emo kid? Sure I respect him for his unbending will of 'Not selling out to the 'man.''


Why do I compare him to whiny emo kids? Because he seems like he'd be so hardcore anti-mainstream that he'd go out of his way to support a band that no one's ever heard of. What's that? You made an underground comic that was liked by the general public? Better cry about it when you signed your rights away.

 

[DarkRyter]

I really liked the Watchmen movie.

But if I wrote a comic book, and some people made a movie I hated based on my book, I'd be understandably upset.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

George Lucas can learn something from this man.

Yes, yes indeed he can.

I say right on Alan, you've moved on and no amount of money can convince you to retread old ground!

 

[Jaebird]

As much as I respect Mr. Moore, I don't give a darn about Watchmen. And he needs to get off his throne of cake and jewels and finish what he started with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century.

 

[SultanP]

I think Alan Moore just became my most respected man in the entertainment business. I mean, they're going to make a shitty Watchmen sequel with a different creative team, but at least he's kept his pride.

What about Seinfeld? He was offered about 5 million dollars per episode if he had continued his series, but he said that the series was done.