Snyder, Miller Preview 300

SCI FI WIRE

12:00 AM, 09-NOVEMBER-06




Snyder, Miller Preview 300

Director Zack Snyder and graphic novelist Frank Miller hosted preview screenings of about half an hour of footage from Snyder's upcoming film adaptation of Miller's 300 in Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 8, including never-before-seen scenes of the film's stylized battle sequences. The screenings for an appreciative audience of invited press and guests at The Lot, the former Warner Hollywood Studios, also included one steamy love scene between stars Gerard Butler as Spartan King Leonidas and Lena Headey as Leonidas' wife, Queen Gorgo.

At the end of the earlier of two screenings, Miller surprised the audience by appearing. "Cool movie, Zack," he told Snyder.

300 tells the story of the mythic Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, in which a couple of hundred Spartan warriors held off an army of millions of invading Persians, eventually inspiring the rest of the Greeks to band together to fight the oppressors.

The footage, which was designed to mirror Miller's desaturated colors and stark graphical images, included about 10 minutes of the film's opening sequence, in which Leonidas as a boy fends of a ravening wolf; the entry of the Persian emissary into Leonidas' Sparta; the first of several key battles, in which the Spartans rout the Persians; and a bit of a battle between the Spartans and the elite Persian "Immortal" warriors. 300, which also stars David Wenham and Rodrigo Santoro, opens March 9, 2007. —Patrick Lee, News Editor


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