Zack Snyder VS Studio on Watchmen final cut

From Variety:

High above the exhibition hall at Comic-Con, Warners was conducting interviews Thursday for Watchmen in advance of their anticipated Hall H show-and-tell on Friday. Zack Snyder is currently battling with Warners over the ultimate running time of the movie, which is three hours. He’s trying to cut it down, but doesn’t want to lose a character like Hollis, a guy who gets murdered about half way through. “”I’m not ready for that yet. If Dark Knight got two and a half hours, Watchmen should get fifteen minutes more,” he pleads. “I’m trying to be reasonable.” Snyder is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the studio’s commercial demands and the fans who love the comics. A movie has to reach beyond the faithful, remaining accessible to mainstream moviegoers.

Thanks to his success with 300, Snyder was able to sell Warners on a faithful adaptation of the Alan Moore mid-80s classic graphic novel. All the previous adapters changed something fundamental, he points out, like updating it to the war on terror. He sets his in the 80s, cast unknowns, and insisted on an R rating. “I wouldn’t know how to do it otherwise,” he says. “Fans should thank 300 because there’s no way they would let me do it, no way, I’ve taken full advantage.”

But the studio still thinks Watchmen is too “too long, too sexy, and too violent,” says Snyder. For him, “that’s a reason to go. That’s the why. If you take that out you take out the why.” Otherwise it’ll just be another “watered down version of Watchmen, and then you might as well make another superhero movie. There’s a million characters out there you could do instead.”