One of the most anticipated panels of this year’s San Diego Comic Con was for the upcoming movie, Watchmen. Moderated by Jeff Jansen of Entertainment Weekly, the panel consisted of director Zack Snyder and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, as well as the cast from the movie.

The movie stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, Malin Akerman as the Silk Spectre II and Carla Gugino as her predecessor, Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, and Patrick Wilson as Night Owl, all who joined Snyder and Gibbons on stage.

The atmosphere in Hall H was electric, with people cheering at the obvious respect that these people have for arguably one of the greatest novels and comics of all time. Their reverence and referencing the TPB as “a bible” was very reminiscent of the atmosphere on the set of Lord of the Rings, where the book was lore and everybody had at least one battered copy lying around to refer too.

One both amusing and encouraging note that Snyder brought up early was the actors’ penchant for referring to the graphic novel and saying that, “See this little circle by my head? That’s what my character says!”

As for Watchmen writer and co-creator Alan Moore and his absence from the movie and disapproval of it, Gibbons joked that, “I see there is an elephant in the room” before adding “I wish that Alan could feel the same kind of excitement and joy that I’m feeling and I wish that he hadn’t had such a bad experience, because I’m having such a good experience.” (Gibbons was referring to Moore’s much popularized problems with previous film adaptations of his comic books.)

Straight off the top almost, a trailer that Snyder describes as “less kid-friendly” than the one being shown in the theaters, was shown for those who made it inside the packed room (read about the footage in our previous coverage, SDCC 08: New ‘Watchmen’ Footage Shown). Needless to say, the reaction in the room was huge.

After Snyder gave a brief rundown of filming, Snyder pointed that he wasn’t trying to make comparisons to real-world terrorism, but that he hoped the movie would act the same as the original graphic novel, and make people question and think.

The biggest one piece of information to come out of this panel was the fact that, not surprisingly, a lot of the extra material that is found in the graphic novel will not be appearing in the movie. Snyder sounded apologetic in noting that the extra information would not be in the movie, but that “we kind of had a basic structure,” and that there’s “”¦going to be some stuff that just isn’t in there. I wanted to get the why of Watchmen “¦ we had to cut out some bits that some people might consider more action, and a little less about the habits of the Watchmen, and more about the big picture.”

Some of this supplemental material might end up on the eventual DVD, and it was previously reported that the Tales of the Black Freighter storyline would have its own animated DVD — starring the voice of Gerald Butler — which will also include a documentary-style film called Under the Hood that will go into detail about the Watchmen characters’ back stories.

Many more questions were asked and answered, even more asked and avoided, and we can only hope that someone from the movie or studio was recording it and that it might make its way up onto the website. For now, we can just wait in anticipation and hope that the newest “restricted” trailer will also make its way on soon!