All it takes is a conversation. If someone in the entertainment industry has a conversation about maybe one day doing something, then you can just report it and you've got yourself a scoop. A meeting, a suggestive look, an approving nod… these are the things we eat up as of late, particularly when it applies to anything we might have some level of attachment to. It doesn't matter that there's no there there, so long as there's the faintest possibility for us to dream about. That's enough to get us by.
That's why I wouldn't put too much stock into the idea, per Collider, that a meeting may have possibly gone down at HBO in which Zack Snyder and the cable network discussed the chances of adapting WATCHMEN for television.
It’s with that in mind that we report that Snyder has been meeting with HBO to talk about a Watchmen TV series. Our sources tell us that the meetings about adapting the DC Comics property have taken place, but unfortunately we don’t have any details as to whether this would be a prequel series, a re-imagining of the events of the Watchmen story itself, or a sequel series.
Has there been a conversation? I wouldn't put it past them. These are the sorts of random talks that happen all the time. The problem is that most of them generate diddly-squat.
It's spit-balling. It's brainstorming. It's whatever you want to call it that essentially amounts to throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and seeing if anything sticks. I can't see anything really happening with WATCHMEN, because what story is left to tell there? Snyder already came about as close as anyone is ever going to get to pulling off WATCHMEN on-screen. We don't need to revisit those waters again.
Now you could point to the BEFORE WATCHMEN prequel comic series and say that's where a series could happen, but that's not really the Watchmen, is it? And is that what you really were hoping for when you considered the possibility of a Watchmen series on HBO? Of course not.
Could something develop here at some point down the line? Perhaps. But with very little to go on as far as what story this would tell, whether Snyder would even be involved, whether HBO has a legitimate interest, it seems more like a thin fog than even smoke.
Everyone always asks who watches the Watchmen, but the more relevant question now is who is talking about who would watch the Watchmen? And I'm not sure we have much clarity on that either.