Ranking high on the list of movies that almost didn't get made, the $120 million superhero saga Watchmen is finally ready for release on March 6, 2009. If superheros aren't your thing, it might help to know that hotties Malin Akerman and Carla Gugino are both in the film.

Based on the iconic comic book series by Alan Moore, Watchmen has been in gestation for more than 20 years at four different studios and through the hands of at least four directors, one of whom deemed it "unfilmable." Luckily for the film, Director Zack Snyder, who directed the remake Dawn of the Dead and the box office hit 300, signed on. Numerous scripts were commissioned and rejected and most of the names on Hollywood's A list - including Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jude Law and Daniel Craig - were once in the running for starring roles.

Watchmen started life as a 12-issue comic book published during 1986 and 1987 and then republished as a graphic novel, the only one ever to win the Hugo Award for fantasy-sci-fi, or to appear on Time magazine's 2005 list of "the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present." Actors in the film portray historical and celebrity figures from the '80s, including U.S. presidents John Kennedy and Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Andy Warhol and young versions of Mick Jagger, David Bowie and even the Village People.

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