Zack Snyder has been talking again about his upcoming crack at the Watchmen film, a comic book adaptation that has been plagued by failed starts and almost made it moments. Now though, this could be the one.

There's some really interesting stuff here. An actor is mentioned, and then put aside, Snyder has been doing tests on Dr Manhattan, plans to do a mix of real and virtual studio's, wants an R script, and has a script he already likes.

What is perhaps the most interesting news is that he thinks the film is about two and a half hours long and that they plan to make a short Black Freighter film at the same time.

For those of you who don't know, the Black Freighter is a comic strip that a character reads through some of the story, and it provides an interesting mirror and dramatic pointers.

Honestly, this interview is exciting if you're a Watchmen fan, even if you're not, some of the things he talks about are deadly exciting. Now we have to hope he gets the film made. Read on for the interview.

...we were talking about Manhattan as just how, you see Dr. Manhattan 100 feet tall walking through the jungles of Vietnam burning the Viet-Con with a couple Hueys off his shoulders, you know. It’s hard to, because it’s political and it’s beautiful and it’s all the things that Fantastic Four could never do, they would never send the Fantastic Four to Iraq, you know, that’s crazy talk. But in the Watchmen world that’s real...

...I have a draft of the script that I like a lot, not to say that we won’t work on it more. You are always trying to make it better, the basic concept is there. We are trying to get more money from marketing, to shoot…we wrote a Black Freighter script that basically we would shoot at the same time and maybe with DVD, because basically the script is designed to take the Black Freighter, you can stick the Black Freighter story into the movie, all the bumpers are there, maybe a special release in the theaters. It would probably make the movie 3 hours long. The movie right now is about 2 ½ hours long...

...I don’t know how to make it PG-13...like when I was 15 I wanted to see that movie but I’m thinking that if it is Rated R...

...I’m not gonna do a virtual studio, I’m gonna do a mix. You know, Mars and Antarctica will probably be done blue screen but then we’d probably try and build a big New York City backdrop somewhere and recreate our “Watchmen version” of New York City. I’ve generated tons of art and I’m starting to, I’ve done a couple frames of Rorschach and I’ve started to do some tests of Dr. Manhattan and that is fun...

Wow, he does sound like he's going to concentrate on getting Manhattan in there as he's shown in the book, and making it a two and a half hour R rated picture sounds perfect to me. Is there anything here that a Watchmen fan couldn't get excited about?

Now he talks a little bit about casting, especially when IESB push him about who he's been looking to...

...with Watchmen you can get actors, I believe, that would never make a comic book movie. Because Watchmen is cool...You’d never get Brad Pitt in tights in a normal movie, and I’m not saying he’s any of the guys, I’m actually not talking to him, but he’s the kind of guy you could get...But, they’d be embarrassed to be in Fantastic Four, as they should. (laughter) I don’t mean to dig on Fantastic Four, it’s just so…so, bubble gum, I can’t take it...

...Jude Law has the Rorschach tattoo.
IESB: Hmm...any possibility of that angle?
ZS: I don’t know, we’ll see, not as Rorschach, but he could be in the movie.

You can read the interview, and also watch it as it was transcribed from one of IESB's video interviews, over at IESB, it's a great read and well worth the time...or a great watch!

So now I'm going to open up the floodgates, who would you want to see play the Watchmen characters?