12 Directors You Didn't Know Almost Made Comic Book Movies

Fox acquired the rights to Watchmen way back in 1986 while the stories were still being published, and Terry Gilliam was recruited in 1989 to adapt it into a feature film.

However, due to Gilliam's previous film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, apparently doubling its initial planned budget due to production problems, he and producer Joel Silver could only raise 25% of their required price tag.

After a second failed attempt in 1991, Gilliam deemed Watchmen "unfilmable", leaving the table before Fox dumped it into development Hell.

Could It Have Worked?: On a stylistic and thematic level, there's no doubt Gilliam would've made a sumptuous and incredibly interesting, singular film. But the economics of it would always have been a problem, and it's easy to see why the studio instead opted for the much safer, hard-edged stylings of Zack Snyder, and even he couldn't make it into a financial success.