Comic-Con: 'Watchmen' panel attracts thousands

You know your Comic-Con panel is rocking when Batman, Joker, and Rorschach all step up to ask questions. Such was the case today with the Watchmen panel, which reached its 6,500-seat capacity close to an hour before the panel began. Hosted by EW's own fabulous Jeff Jensen, the panel centered on director Zach Snyder and his Watchmen: Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan; Matthew Goode as Ozymandias; Carla Gugino as the first Silk Spectre; Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach; Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian (pictured); and Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl. Dave Gibbons, the cocreator of Watchmen, also made a special appearance.

Snyder delighted fans with a beautiful, artistic extended trailer that, as Snyder put it, showed "the non-PG aspects of the movie." (It was also the first time the cast saw the trailer, and Goode asked for a repeat showing of the footage at the end of the panel.) Jensen politely grilled Gibbons on why his cocreator, Alan Moore, can't get over his long-standing grudge against Hollywood. "I see there is an elephant in the room," Gibbons said. "I wish he could feel the joy I'm feeling and not have had such a bad experience before." All the cast addressed taking on their iconic, subversive characters. Said Jeffrey Dean Morgan of his morally ambiguous Comedian, "Getting into costume and sticking a cigar in my mouth helped me want to kill people." Synder added, "Saw is dark because people get their arms sawed off. People get their arms sawed off in our movie too, but for different reasons. For moral reasons." Written by Alex Tse and David Hayter, the film will bow on March 6, 2009.