Zack Snyder Bringing Watchmen to HBO?

One of the great struggles of the modern geek age has been DC Comics continued quest for mainstream interest and relevance.  This battle has been raging more or less continuously since 1986 when The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen hit stands and transformed the comics landscape forever.  Since then DC has been desperately working to claim permanent cultural dominance through movies, TV, games, and all manner of other methods. 

This has come with obvious ups and downs but recently they’ve hit something of a major snag.  While Marvel launches themselves forward with hip new comics that showcase diversity and accessibility DC has floundered in numerous reboots and branding initiatives along with some fairly bad film failures like Green Lantern and Man of Steel. 

The only place DC seems to be winning its cultural battle is on TV as Arrow and Flash have cemented themselves as major superhero hits alongside blossoming success like Gotham and Supergirl and upcoming shows like Lucifer, Preacher, and Legends of Tomorrow.  Even though Marvel has its own successful TV shows and Image has tested the television waters a number of times this is where DC has really planted its flag.  So, I guess it then makes sense that they would try and wed their new success to their old success, by which I mean of course a Watchmen TV show.

Though nothing has been confirmed yet Zack Snyder has met with HBO about possibly producing a Watchmen TV show.  Obviously this is still very earlier days so it’s unclear in what capacity this show will work.  It’s possible that they’ll adapt the controversial and unpopular Before Watchmen comic minis from a few years ago if the idea is that the show will work in tandem with Snyder’s underwhelming film adaptation from 2009.  I find this idea honestly pretty likely.  Even though Before Watchmen faded from collective consciousness with incredible speed it’s the perfect concept for the kind of adaptation HBO almost certainly desires in that it’s art-esc.  The content of Before Watchmen isn’t actually artistic or controversial when you get down to it, it’s basically just so much up-jumped fan fiction despite the high caliber of writers and artists involved.  That was to be expected though, Before Watchmen was an exercise in soulless corporate branding, using the recognizable trappings of the Watchmen brand to lend credibility to a fairly bland product.  I get the sense that’s exactly what HBO wants here, something to give the illusions of depth, intelligence, and art without actually needing to challenge their viewers in a meaningful way.  Additionally going off of Before Watchmen would allow them to make the show a contemporary period piece (IE set in the ‘60s and ‘70s,) a genre that’s open territory now that Mad Men has passed on. 

Alternatively this could be meant as a clean slate, a fresh telling of the story on its own merits with Snyder only attached because he’s been awkwardly forced into the role of creative head of the DC entertainment unit.  This strikes me as the less likely but kind of more horrifying possibility.  If it is the case it’s actually a pretty good sign for HBO, given this means they’re looking to adapt something that’s at least semi-challenging and wouldn’t be an easy task.  However, it’d be terrible for DC because it really would mean Zack Snyder is now helming the creative controls and he’s honestly a terrible choice for that job. 

Now to be clear I’m not saying Zack Snyder is a bad a director, in fact I think he’s actually a brilliant cinematographer with a unique eye for spectacle and action that sets him apart from the pack in a big way.  However, much like fellow director Neil Blomkamp Snyder has shown himself to be an incredibly limited storyteller whose original vision seems murky at best.  Admittedly it’s a bit unfair that the speed of modern film consumption and digestion now basically demands storytellers arrive fully formed but at the same time Snyder’s been in the game for a decade or so now.  Unlike Blomkamp he’s had time to grow and develop as a storyteller and just really hasn’t.  Maybe the increased responsibility will give him more to work with but for right now he’s being asked to produce great work with the wrong tools. 

It’s also possible this will be new Watchmen material, imagining some kind of post-Watchmen universe.  This strikes me as the least likely thing to occur given how peaceful things were left at the end of Watchmen but I’d actually be very interested if they went this way.  Something I’ve always disliked about Watchmen in a fan context is the insane levels of fan loved heaped upon the twin lunatic murderers of Rorschach and The Comedian and doing a Watchmen sequel would cut them out of the story altogether.  Still it’s easily the riskiest maneuver given how much it’d have to rely on the audience knowing the events of Watchmen.  What’s more there’d be no tested safety net to work from and inform the series.

That last sentence is honestly the vibe I get most from this project, that whatever crystallizes out of this unholy union is going to end up safe, corporatized, digestible matter being passed off as risky and artistic.  It’s that hope that if they follow this tested plot and these tested characters the end product will be incredibly moving and revolutionary because “hey it worked in comic form so it should work for comics too.”  This is the same attitude that informs the inordinate amount of cheap slasher remakes and it is now and forever will be gutless, cheap, and wasteful.  Even as someone with a complicated relationship with Watchmen I’ve always respected the comic and that’s because it was the opposite of this kind of branded claptrap, Watchmen was a bold and work intensive labor, making it into an HBO branded, cross-promotional DC show is just cowardly and lazy.    


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