The music video for My Chemical Romance's "Desolation Row" has finally made its North American debut. The song, a reinterpretation of the Bob Dylan classic, was recorded specifically for the upcoming feature film Watchmen. Watchmen: Music From the Motion Picture, which contains the song, is due from Warner Sunset / Reprise Records on March 3rd, three days before the film hits theaters nationwide.
The video, which was helmed by Watchmen director Zack Snyder, transports the viewer into the world of Watchmen in an alternate 1985. My Chemical Romance is performing at a dive bar, reigning as the lords of anarchy above a moshpit. As the crowd surges back and forth, the scene recalls the glory days of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Iggy Pop, and The Dead Kennedys. A fight breaks out and becomes a bloody free-for-all as the band keeps playing. The mayhem spills out onto the street. The cops arrive and drag off the band members who are kicking, spitting, and punching the whole way. Director of Photography Guillermo Navarro (an Academy Award® winner for Pan's Labyrinth), has given the proceedings a grimy, otherworldly effect.
The exclusive video premiere of "Desolation Row" takes place four days after the song debuts on iTunes on January 26th. Users can pre-order Watchmen: Music From the Motion Picture, which also features a collection of classic songs by such artists as Nat King Cole, Leonard Cohen, and Janis Joplin, beginning on January 27th. The video will premiere internationally on January 31st and go wide in the U.S. on February 3rd.
A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock" — which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union — moves closer to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion — a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers — Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past.
Watchmen is directed by Zack Snyder from a screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel co-created by Dave Gibbons, published by DC Comics. The film is produced by Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin, and Deborah Snyder. Herbert W. Gains and Thomas Tull are the executive producers, with Wes Coller serving as co-producer. The film stars Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson.
Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures present, in Association with Legendary Pictures, a Lawrence Gordon / Lloyd Levin Production, a Zack Snyder Film, Watchmen. Watchmen will be released nationwide on March 6, 2009. It will be distributed domestically by Warner Bros. Pictures and internationally by Paramount Pictures.
