DC Comics Preparing For Watchmen Franchise Expansion

In what is clearly a money-making scheme and nothing much more, DC Comics want to make Alan Moore’s brilliantly unique world of the Watchmen into a fully-fledged franchise.

It’s going to be full of prequels, sequels, spin-offs and further films apparently. I’m sure Alan Moore would have an issue with this. The brilliantly named Dan Didio, senior VP of DC Comics, has taken on the project to expand the Watchmen universe and against the views of Paul Levitz (the former president of DC). He believes and rightly so that the Watchmen should be an area that shouldn’t be tinkered with.

Zack Snyder messed around with the comics/graphic novel last year by adapting it into a Hollywood blockbuster but thankfully he tried his hardest to do the comics/novel justice and not commercialise the crap out of it for the sake of money. To some extent he succeeded but I’d have liked to have had the original albeit ridiculous ending that Moore and Gibbons envisioned and created. Unfortunately a video game followed suit and that was less successful and of a lesser quality to boot…

If DC do go ahead with their plans there will be a fair amount of shit hitting fans (and maybe fans throwing shit at Dan Didio) but their first obstacle may well be finding people to take on the task of creating a sequel. Who would possibly want to step into Moore and Gibbon’s shoes and against the best wishes of the creator try and recapture the magic of the 1986 original but with entirely new content? There may be a few bold people out there looking for an opportunity (such as Zack Snyder) but I hope that from now on the Watchmen franchise is left untouched.

Unless Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller partner up to make a prequel film. That I could accept… but only if Alan Moore writes the script.

Source: Empire