Watchmen movie 'looks amazing'

By Frances Cronin
Newsbeat entertainment reporter

Watchmen, out next year, is a film adaptation of a 1986 comic series

Rising British star Matthew Goode is going from one extreme to another with his movie roles.

You can see him in costume drama Brideshead Revisited from this weekend, but after filming that he went straight on to his part in Watchmen - the most anticipated graphic novel adaptation ever.

He told Newsbeat it was surreal: "Three days after filming in Marrakech (for Brideshead) I'm suddenly out in Vancouver practising Kung Fu and doing something so off the wall and bizarre in an alternative 80s when Nixon is still president and there's the doomsday clock. You know that's what you want as an actor."

He says it wasn't a conscious decision to do such varied roles.

"Everyone is like 'Was that a decisive choice?', but you just go up for these auditions and it sounds facetious but I've just been really lucky, I've been so lucky."

Costume 'surprise'

Watchmen is widely regarded as the best graphic novel ever. The story is set in an alternate 1985 where Superheroes are real and the US is heading towards a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

It tells the story of a group of past and present heroes and superheroes and the mysterious murder of one of them.

Matthew plays Adrian Veidt (aka Ozymandias) a retired vigilante superhero who has made his identity public: "It's fully 80s and it's comparable to Brideshead as it goes over several different eras."

Matthew is nervous about how Watchmen fans will react

However, he admits the costumes were quite a surprise: "I have some classic outfits. I look like David Bowie half the time with a big blonde wig and I have a supersuit - Batman-esque with all the muscles and it's deeply uncomfortable to wear, but hilarious fun."

Matthew wasn't an expert on the novel before he was cast but he says he has done his background work into Watchmen.

"There's not so much research you can do because it's set in this alternative reality.

"But it's so dense and it's the graphic novel of all graphic novels, so you've just got constantly keep going back to the novel itself."

This project came about after a number of planned movie versions failed to get off the ground.

It was reported one director linked to the project decided it was un-filmable.

This adaptation is being directed by Zack Snyder who made 300, another graphic book adaptation.

But with this being the ultimate graphic novel Matthew admits he is very nervous about the reaction of Watchmen fans: "I'm hugely worried. I met 7000 of them at Comic Con but I think from what we've seen of the little bits of it already it does look amazing, but I'll know more when I see it myself, I don't want to burn any bridges."

We get to see it in March 2009.