Idea IS the format

UPDATE: [When watching this trailer, I HIGHLY recommend using the fullscreen option. it's that little box with the arrow in it, on the right-hand side. Yup, that one.]

You may have seen the Watchmen widget adorn these pages before now, but this one’s different. It probably looks the same right now, but plan is that come roughly 4am 1am GMT tomorrow this (Friday) morning there’s going to be one important difference.

And guess who gets to be up at that time in the morning pushing the changes live? ≠)

UPDATE [12.17PM GMT Thursday] One detail you might want to note: that little fullscreen option down below the trailer window. You might be needing that.

UPDATE [00.38AM GMT Friday] Twenty minutes to go, or thereabouts. I’m really very tired, and have lots of switches and levers to operate to ensure this works properly. I think, perhaps, tea.

UPDATE [01.39AM GMT Friday] Cheeky blighters went early.  Trailer was live by the time I sat back down with my brew.  Thankfully, around the same time our widget dev popped up in IM and ushered it live.  All very painless, and immensely satisfying.  Think I’m going to have me a little kip now.  Tomorrow’s hardly simple.

Night all x

Another Watchmen teaser one-sheet, following on from the one I posted lasted week.  This actually reminds me slightly of one of the teasers for The Dark Knight, in which The Joker is standing in the streets of Gothan, the buildings towering over him, his back turned.

I love the fact that teaser trailers and artwork can be uncompromising in this way, using copy lines, compositions and artistic styles that would never make it onto the final signature marketing material.  It’s a chance for the film-makers to tap into the growing fervour of the fans, and to spread a little intrigue amongst the broader audience about to discover Watchmen for the very first time.

The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”…and I’ll look down, and whisper “No.” RORSCHACH

I’ve spent the last ten hours at my desk working through some critical development of what is by far the most ambitious piece of campaign activity I’ve ever been involved with.

It makes the stuff we did on “300″, Untraceable and Indy 4 look like a walk in the park. Every time I step away from it for a moment I look down and it makes me feel dizzy.

Frankly, I think it will be a miracle if any of it ever makes it live in anything like the form we currently envisage, but I love the fact that we’re getting a crack at it.

This isn’t supposed to be some secretive post saying nothing in particular about something few of you would be at all interested in anyway.

I just want to mark the day and date, and go on record that there came a point today when I stopped and thought about it and there wasn’t a thing in the world I could think of that I’d rather be doing.

Not that pays, anyway.

LOVE this. Check out all six here.

[Update (about 5 minutes later):

Just occurred to me that this is a Fox/Warner Bros mash-up, coming at a time when the two continue to wrangle over the rights for the movie.

My guess is that we won't be seeing Rorschach haunting the streets of Springfield any time soon.

That's probably for the best. I don't think the world's quite ready to watch a masked sociopath splitting Spider-Pig's head open with a rusty cleaver.]

Here it is. It might not be the chock full of content right now, but just look at how many days we’ve got left to fill it with all manner of Watchmen goodness!

For anybody wondering what to expect from WATCHMEN (recently wrapped by Zack Snyder and co. and due out on March 6 2009) here’s a glimpse of where it begins; with the unfathomable mind of writer Alan Moore; with the classic style of illustrator Dave Gibbons; and with the initial unravelling of a mystery pursued to it’s epochal conclusion by the disturbed and poetic vigilante Rorschach:

By 10.00am this morning I’d already been sent links to these WATCHMEN character shots by three different people.

The Comedian:

Rorschach:

Nite Owl:

Ozymandias:

The Silk Spectre:

Either people know that I’m a massive WATCHMEN fan, or this movie is already being brilliantly teased out into the public domain, exactly one year out from release. Or both. Probably both.

As for the characters, I think they’re exceptionally well realised. I was one of 6,500 people at Comic-con who sat in the palm of Zack Snyder’s prodigious hand as he explained some of the challenges he was trying to overcome in deciding how to make the movie, and why he had reached the crucial decision not to try and modernise the story in the style of his predecessors on the project. It felt at the time as though the greatest comic ever written was in safe hands. Seeing these, I’m feeling more confident of this than ever.

For anybody wanting further reading I heartily recommend Zack’s own WATCHMEN production blog.