UPDATE: Watchmen cast confirmed; months of fanboy wishcasting and speculation goes to waste.

The rumormongering surrounding director Zach Snyder and writer David Hayter's upcoming adaptation of Watchmen got a little out of hand on these tubes of ours. Hell, we even thought some of it was true. But in the end, the official cast, announced today, is probably about what you'd expect in the real world: solid, but hardly star-studded. Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) gets what is more or less the lead role as Rorschach, the uncompromising borderline-sociopathic vigilante. Patrick Wilson (uh, also Little Children) gets the part of Nite Owl, a reluctantly retired hero who's feeling down and out now that he's out of the adventuring game. Billy Crudup (Almost Famous/Master Card ads) will play the nuclear-modified Dr. Manhattan, the only costumed hero with actual super powers. The little-known Malin Ackerman (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) will be Laurie Juspeczyk, a young woman who was pushed into crime fighting by her mother who now feels disillusioned with both that life and her new one living on a military base with Dr. Manhattan. Matthew Goode (Match Point) is Ozymandias, the rich, powerful, Egypt-obsessed, "smartest man in the world," who now spends his time using his crime-fighting past to further his own agenda by publicly performing feats of strength and the like. And finally, Jeffrey Dean Morgan will be the Comedian, the cynical stongman whose murder serves as the inciting incident of the whole plot.

We're satisfied with this cast, but it still seems a little on the young side to us. No matter. It's here now, nothing anyone can do about it. Time to start hoping for the best.

FRIDAY UPDATE: Snyder just gave his Comic Con presentation; said little of substance. Dr. Manhattan will be CGI, but that was fairly obvious anyway. Says he has Dave Gibbons's blessing. No word on what Alan Moore thinks about this, but here's a guess: he's going to hate it.