Watchmen movie pulled

(from SciFiWire)

Paramount has pulled the plug on its proposed film version of Watchmen, Alan Moore's celebrated superhero graphic novel, Variety reported. Producers Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin were taking the project, with British director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) attached, out to other studios, the trade paper reported.

Watchmen came under heavy scrutiny in the wake of Paramount chief Brad Grey's surprise move to replace Donald De Line with Gail Berman as studio president in late March, the trade paper reported. De Line found out about the change while in London meeting with Greengrass about Watchmen and the need to cut its budget, rumored to be $100 million, the trade paper reported.

Paramount had been aiming for a summer start, but began releasing crews working on preproduction at that point.

I'm relieved. Some books shouldn't be made into movies. This is one of them. You can't cut the budget on a story like this one and be able to pull it off properly. No film could be as good as this book was.