Miller Awed At 300 Film

Miller Awed At 300 Film

SCI FI Wire

November10,2006

Frank Miller, the graphic novelist whose fantastical 300 has been adapted into a movie, told SCI FI Wire that the film may inspire youngsters in the same way that an earlier movie version of the same true story inspired him to create the book in the first place. Miller reacted with awe after screening footage of director Zack Snyder's 300 on Nov. 8 in Hollywood, Calif., along with invited press and other guests. "I sat here stunned at a lot of this footage," Miller said in a question-and-answer period following the screening. "I never saw this stuff coming. You know, Zack blew me away on this."

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

Miller wrote the book after it had been gestating in his mind from childhood. "I was a little kid when I saw a much earlier film version of the story," he said, likely referring to the 1962 film The 300 Spartans. "A much tamer one. ... The story haunted me ever since. It's redefining everything a hero was. And so years went by, and I told myself, 'When I'm good enough, I'm going to do this story.' And more years went by, and I found myself talking about it too much. I was afraid I had become one of those boring people who sat around talking about a story he never did. So to make up for lost time, I went to Greece. And I read up everything there was ... and turned it into my book, with [colorist] Lynn Varley. And I never intended it for being a movie. As a matter fact, I was kind of shying away from any of my material being movies."

Miller changed his mind about allowing the book to be adapted in the wake of the success of Robert Rodriguez's faithful adaptation of Miller's Sin City and after being pitched by Snyder and producers Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton.

In retrospect, Miller added: "As far as things I would have taken from the film, yeah, I guess I would have made it a film. ... Before I got to the set, they were slamming along through all these battle scenes. I ... maybe jokingly thought about killing Zack. ... Maybe I'll show up and be nice to everybody, take Zack out back, pop and leave him in the snow. ... [But] my main reaction, ... I'm very happy with the book. But I think what this team has put together through sheer dedication and ... even with humor, ... is create a bunch more bright-eyed kids who can't get a story out of their heads." 300, which stars Gerard Butler, Lena Headey and David Wenham, opens March 9, 2007. —Patrick Lee, News Editor


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