Credit: Watchmen
Alan Moore is not impressed by any of his adaptations. The original comic book writer of V for Vendetta and The Watchmen hasn’t been shy about voicing his true feelings regarding the adaptations of his works. DC and Moore don’t exactly have a good history with one another; The comic book writer worked for DC and created Watchmen back in 1986, but following disputes about royalties and an age-rating system, Moore left the company for good.
Moore and DC’s relationship has been extremely Rocky since then, with the former refusing to accept royalties for adaptations. The author was given a chance to get his full rights back in 2010, with the studio vying to do sequels and prequels with his comics in exchange for the full rights back, and Moore didn’t want it:
Credit: Watchmen
“They offered me the rights to Watchmen back if I would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels, “Moore told Wired. “So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked. But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.”
This was fresh off of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen feature, which is one of the more underrated superhero pics that didn’t particularly do well at the box office. Following Moore turning down the offer to get his rights back, HBO ended up doing a Watchmen series with Regina King, Jeremy Irons, and Jean Smart. Lost and The Leftovers creator Damian Lindelof took on the project, and the mini-series was heavily praised by critics, though fans were more divisive on the finished product. Moore was given an opportunity to add his input to the television show, but he wanted no part of it and told Lindelof to never contact him again:
Credit: Watchmen
“[There was] a frank letter from the showrunner of the Watchmen television adaptation, which I hadn’t heard was a thing at that point, ” said Moore. “But the letter, I think it opened with, ‘Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen.’ That wasn’t the best opener. It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling. ‘Can you at least tell us how to pronounce “Ozymandias”?”
Moore didn’t go into exactly what Lindelof said in the letter, but it’s clear he wanted no part of the 2019 series. In response, the Watchmen creator was blunt and told to never get a hold of him ever again, “I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Brothers were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason,” he told GQ.
Credit: Watchmen
Moore further explains that he disowned his own work because the film and comics industry has completely moved away from the true meaning of what he created originally. Moore finds the adaptations “embarrassing” and had no issues swiftly rejecting any sort of assistance to the HBO series. Even without the help of Moore, Watchmen went on to win 11 Primetime Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series. Despite all of the accolades that the show has received, Moore feels that the adaptation didn’t get anything right about his original works:
“When I saw the television industry awards that the Watchmen television show had apparently won, I thought, ‘Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think Watchmen was?’ They think that it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise that was something to do with white supremacism,” he said. “Did they not understand Watchmen? Watchmen was nearly 40 years ago and was relatively simple in comparison with a lot of my later work. What are the chances that they broadly understood anything since? This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart.”The Watchmen
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