Zack Snyder Almost Hoped His Watchmen Adaptation Was Never Released

The credits for Zack Snyder's 2009 superhero epic "Watchmen" say that the film was based on the comic book by Dave Gibbons. Gibbons was the talented artist behind "Watchmen," originally published in 1986 and 1987. The initial inventor and writer of "Watchmen," Alan Moore, infamously had his name removed from the movie and signed all of his royalty rights over to Gibbons. Moore has openly objected to the very notion of Hollywood adapting his work, feeling it was already perfectly fine in comic book form. In 2008, Moore said he'd never watch the movie.

Those who have seen Snyder's film might understand Moore's position. The original comics were a careful deconstruction of superhero tropes, set in an alternate version of the 1980s where the world had been permanently altered by the appearance of superheroes. In this universe, though, not everything was hunky-dory. Nixon had stayed in office for more than two terms, for instance. It was a complex and wry satire of 1980s conservative politics, and traced the sticky ethics and damaged minds of those who became vigilantes. Snyder's film, in contrast, was shiny, slick, and conventionally "cool." It lacked the thoughtfulness and grit that made the comics so remarkable. 

Snyder himself doesn't have good memories of making "Watchmen," either. He made the film he wanted, but he had to go through a frustrating legal battle over the movie. Many "Watchmen" fans may remember this, but back in 2008, there was a legal battle over whether 20th Century Fox or Warner Bros. had the distribution rights to the movie. The New York Times noted that the battle was so contentious, Zack Snyder began to secretly hope that "Watchmen" would be shelved indefinitely. That way, at the very least, his film would become darkly legendary.

It should be noted that the case was indeed settled, and "Watchmen" was released in theaters on March 6, 2009. The previous January, though, as audiences were gearing up to see the film, Snyder admitted that the entire legal battle was exhausting, and that his movie might garner a better reputation if it remained unreleased ... and kind of mysterious. The New York Times noted in their Snyder interview that "Watchmen" was a cursed production; the film was initially optioned way back in 1986, but had been in some stage of development across various studios since as early as 1991. 

When asked in early 2009 if the then-ongoing lawsuit made him the latest victim of the notorious "Watchmen" curse, Snyder admitted that it might have. But then he considered that directing a completed, high-profile, $150 million movie that was shelved might actually earn him a certain degree of dark pop culture clout: 

"I thought if the movie gets shelved for all time it would be awesome — there are a couple of my friends that have seen it, and they were like, 'We would go on lecture tour and just describe the film to people. That would be our whole thing. We would just be in a big hall and say, "okay, the first shot is this. And then the next shot."' And they could have gotten all the things off the web and they could kind of weave the story. And they could kind of build the film as spoken word. I wasn't completely opposed to that." 

Snyder's friends hitting the lecture circuit, describing the unreleased "Watchmen" movie in perpetuity, is an interesting prospect.

One might see Snyder's dreams for "Watchmen" play out in the notorious saga of "Coyote vs. ACME." Warner Bros. infamously declared that it would cancel the release of the completed film for tax reasons, causing an uproar among potential audiences. After a lot of back-and-forth that we needn't get into here, "Coyote vs. ACME" was rescued from the digital vault and will finally be released in August of 2026. The threat of cancellation has likely only boosted the movie's profile, and it will probably be released among a flurry of thinkpieces and reviews measuring the film's quality in terms of its potential dark fate. 

It should be noted that "Watchmen" was released to only middling audience response. Made for somewhere between $120-$150 million, it only made about $187 million back (making it a legit bomb). Critics were only slightly positive on the film; it currently has a 64% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 304 reviews. I personally happen to agree with Alan Moore: I think "Watchmen" was perfectly fine in comic book form, and didn't need a feature film adaptation in 2009 to explore its ideas in a new historical context. 

But what if it had been cancelled? What if Snyder's film was still on a shelf in a Warner Bros. vault somewhere, never to see the light of day? That would have made "Watchmen" mythic, distant — an eternal possibility. No one could have been disappointed by Snyder's vision, because no one would have seen it. An unreleased "Watchmen" would still be making headlines at comic conventions to this day, with its cast members giving table reads of the script. Perhaps Snyder was right back in 2009: Directing an unreleased "Watchmen" film might have been the better option.