Alan Moore's Watchmen

The movie adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen seemed to be jinxed - it's been in gestation for so long. The IMDB entry is found here:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0409459/

Neil Gaiman posted on his blog, "a lot of people think it will be really really good, which is why I'm nervous about it". Movie adaptations of Alan Moore's works have been consistently far from the original material. As enjoyable as they are, they don't have the depth and the "oomph" of the graphoc novels.

The current production-in-progress of Watchmen by Zach Snyder (director of the recent 300 adaptation) has me intrigued. Ignoring for a moment his odd ADD+MTV-sensibility and the fact that he tried to convince Keanu Reeves of all the world's possible actors to join the cast... He seems to at least have the chops to take good graphic novel panels and convert them almost directly to good cinematography. Additionally (and unlike the Wachowski's V for Vendetta thing) he actually seems to understand the milieu in question and seeks to reproduce it (going out the way to find quality doubles for historical figures like Richard Nixon and Spirow Agnew, amongst others). I actually have some hope that Snyder may actually successfully translate Moore's work to the big screen. That's a huge order on the table, but Alan Moore deserves at least one good adaptation of his works and if there is one of his works that stands out and needs a good adaptation, Watchmen is the work. I have hope, but I can't say I'm all that optimistic... We'll just have to see when it reaches the theater.