The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

So says Alan Moore when asked the inevitable questions about the Watchmen movie by the LA Times. At some point interviewers are going to stop asking him about movies. I don’t think he’s going to change his mind at this point.

I’m assuming we all know the reasons why Alan Moore’s name is not on the movie posters of his work?

Short version: Moore disliked the movie business and kept himself away from it, essentially selling rights and washing his hands of it, preferring to consider the movies of his work as something completely separate. But first there was the court case over League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where a movie writer accused Warners of stealing his movie idea and getting Moore to write the comic as a cover. Then the V For Vendetta farce with Moore being quoted in support of a film he wanted nothing to do with.

And now we have Watchmen. Personally I’m surprised to see him even comment, but I suppose people keep asking him the questions so comment he has. The latest is in the LA Times:

“Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic,” Moore said. “Perhaps it’s been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come.”

The interviewer does point out that this is said more mischievously than maliciously and later on Moore comes out with the following quote, a great example of the real reasons he wants nothing to do with the movies:

“I got into comics because I thought it was a good and useful medium that had not been explored to it fullest potential,”

“If you approach comics as a poor relation to film, you are left with a movie that does not move, has no soundtrack and lacks the benefit of having a recognizable movie star in the lead role.”