Watchmen, Alan Moore’s seminal 1985 graphic novel that marked perhaps the first successful “deconstruction” of the superhero mythos, is finally getting its long-rumored film adaptation.

This, of course, isn’t news. It’s long been known to comic and film fans that the movie adaptation is slated for release on 6 March 2009, or just a little under a year from today. (Principal photography has just completed on the project.)

Zack Snyder, the film’s director, has just opened a production blog for Internet fans to keep an eye on the film as it develops from raw footage to completed movie. Currently visible now are photos of five principal characters in costume: The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the second Nite-Owl (Patrick Wilson), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), and the second Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman). (Dr. Manhattan, the other major character in the Watchmen story, is not represented, as he will be a mostly CGI character. For the record, he’ll be played by Billy Crudup.)

As someone who is a major fan of the graphic novel, I’m understandably a bit leery of any film adaptation of a story that is so firmly rooted in the medium of its original telling. It’s been said before, but bears repeating - Watchmen is a work of great artistic subtlety and nuance, and often requires multiple readings before you start to notice all the little details that enhance the tale. Granted, I’m not Alan Moore on this subject (who, in case you haven’t heard, wants nothing whatsoever to do with this or any other adaptation of his works), but I do have to question how well it’ll translate to a big-budget Hollywood retelling. My guess is, probably not well at all, but still better than most of the doomsayers may think.

I will say this much, however. Based on the promo shots of the lead characters so far, it seems they’ve got the look down about right. In particular, Rorschach and the Comedian look as if they popped right off of Dave Gibbons’s model sheets and into the third dimension. I even approve of the slight changes made to the other three characters present here, especially Silk Spectre (whose costume here looks way better than the one Gibbons came up with for her in the comics). Other reports, such as Snyder using the graphic novel as a storyboard, the decision to keep the film set during 1985 amid the Cold War backdrop of the original comic (firmly setting the movie in the “alternate history” subgenre), and even Alan Moore’s left-handed praise for their efforts (in an interview, while he held firm that he won’t even go to see the movie, he did allow that, after reading David Hayter’s script for the film, it came “as close as [he] could imagine anyone getting to Watchmen“) fill me with something akin to confidence that this will work out in the end.

This will definitely be one to keep your eyes on as it develops. It’s been over two decades since Watchmen first took comics by storm, and almost as long since the movie rights were first optioned. After years of false starts, it’s finally going to happen next year. The question remains, however, will it be worth the wait? Or will it end up like V for Vendetta, the other major film adaptation of a Moore masterpiece - a flawed, Hollywood-ified bastardization of the story Moore intended to tell?

We’ll find out in 359 days…

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