8 Things Watchmen TV Show Must Do Differently To Zack Snyder's Film

7. ...Or Just Make It A Prequel

Before Watchmen Minutemen
DC Comics/Darwyn Cooke

DC's Before Watchmen event was immediately controversial upon being announced. As we all know, Alan Moore isn't a fan of seeing the license chopped up and shipped off to different creators, as to him, it exemplifies (partially) what's wrong with the modern day industry.

And while there were indeed some spin-offs that failed in a whole manner of different ways upon release, one series - written and drawn by the late, great Darwyn Cooke - seemed to justify the event and then some. Set during the golden and silver ages of Moore's universe, Before Watchmen: Minutemen followed the original Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Captain Metropolis, Comedian and Hooded Justice as they moved into the Cold War era, with a narration provided by an older Hollis Mason.

The book was a critical hit when it released, with reviewers praising Cooke's feel for the world along with his art-style, which again, seemed to lend itself remarkably well to the original comic's aesthetic.

Following this route would at once differentiate the series from the film and the OGN and afford Lindelof and co. a great deal of space to manoeuvre. With the showrunner's Instagram photo highlighting the statue used to bludgeon Mason to death, it could be a more likely path for the show than once thought.

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Content Producer/Presenter

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.