The Conquering Heroes

At a time when Hollywood's profit margins are being squeezed from all sides, 300's triumph will also be read by many as a step toward fiscal responsibility, a sign that a frugal — yes, even spartan — style of moviemaking can yield rewards as great as or even greater than the traditional star-driven approach. ''I think it's totally heartening,'' says Bob Berney, president of the indie film company Picturehouse, which turned another underdog film, Pan's Labyrinth, into a mainstream success. ''It's encouraging to see that you can tap into this audience on a lower-budget film and have a huge upside. It's good for the business and it's good for the audience.''

It's certainly good for Frank Miller, who is already courting Warner Bros. with the prospect of a 300 sequel, the details of which he is keeping strictly under wraps for now. ''I'm not going to say more to you than I'd say to them, which is that I know what it is,'' he says. ''That's all they get to hear for free.'' For his part, Snyder is starting work on another graphic-novel adaptation for Warner Bros., this one based on the much-loved superhero epic Watchmen. (In a twist devoured by fanboys, a blink-and-you-missed-it frame of the Watchmen character Rorschach showed up in the leaked 300 footage.) As he did with 300, Snyder intends to stick to his hard-R-loving guns when he makes the grim, dystopian Watchmen. ''There's a lot of tough things in it,'' he says. ''There's a rape, children are murdered and eaten by dogs, pregnant women are shot. Thematically, it's just R-ish.'' And having accepted 300's decapitated heads and splattering blood, Warner Bros.' Horn is prepared to lay down his sword and shield on the next battle. ''If Zack feels more comfortable making Watchmen an R, he will win that argument,'' he says. ''He has just proven the R rating is not a barrier to huge grosses.''

As for what ultimately drove the Spartans to those huge numbers? In Snyder's mind, the magic number behind the victory is not 300 — it's 15. ''My generation, the Star Wars generation, has grown older, but they haven't grown up,'' he says. ''They haven't matured. You still need to get in touch with your inner 15-year-old. Because he's in there.'' In other words, Spartan boys may have lost their innocence early, when their fathers taught them how to kill and die. But in America childhood never ends: It's just playing at a theater near you.

With reporting by Steve Daly; additional reporting by Joshua Rich and Adam B. Vary