7 'Unadaptable' Comic Book Storylines (That Are Already Becoming Movies)
6. Watchmen (HBO)
DC Comics
The quintessential 'unadaptable' comic book, Watchmen, is set for a turn on TV with HBO, over eight years since it landed as a film. And while the fact that it was, y'know, actually adapted kind of lends it an 'adaptable' quality, it didn't deliver the same effect as the original Alan Moore comic book did, even with that massive running time.
There are just some books out there that don't lend themselves well to the visual medium, and Watchmen is most certainly one of them. It's not that it's too big to be condensed into a film, or even a miniseries - it's that the comic book format is really the only way the story can be told. The book's expansive - that much is true - but it's also uniquely served by panels, speech bubbles and the pencils of Dave Gibbons so much so that a fluid, real time rendition of the book can never truly capture its essence.
Plus, with rumours now circulating that the series won't even be attempting to follow the main beats of the comic, it's apparent that there's no easy way to translate it to another medium, be that on TV or otherwise.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
