10 Movies That Spent Decades In Development Hell

None of Alan Moore's works have had a particularly smooth transition to the big screen, so much so that the famed comic book writer takes absolutely nothing to do with them. Watchmen is arguably his magnum opus, and one that was frequently deemed 'unfilmable', which seemed to be true for the longest time until Zack Snyder finally got the project over the finishing line in 2009.

20th Century Fox were the first studio to try and get Watchmen off the ground in 1986 to no avail, and by 1991 the rights had ended up at Warner Bros. with Terry Gilliam attached to direct, before budget concerns saw the ambitious adaptation shelved indefinitely.

Due to the comic book movie boom around the turn of the millennium Watchmen was hot property once again, but still nobody knew how to get the damn thing made. Between 2001 and 2004 alone Universal, Revolution Studios and Paramount all threw their hat into the ring with David Hayter, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass all having a brief flirtation with the project.

By 2005 the rights were back at Warner Bros. and the studio approached soon-to-be 'Visionary Director' Zack Snyder to tackle the seemingly-cursed adaptation. Somehow, Snyder managed to film the unfilmable and after 22 years of trying, there was finally a live-action Watchmen movie. And it was... perfectly okay.