High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Watchmen is a 2009 film based on a twelve-issue comic book limited series of same name created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins, published by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987. The graphic novel`s film rights were acquired by producer Lawrence Gordon in 1986. Many problems halted the adaptation`s development, with four different studios and various directors and screenwriters being attached to the project through twenty years. In 2006, Zack Snyder, who at the time was filming another comic book adaptation, 300, was hired by Warner Bros. to helm Watchmen. Filming started in 2007, and following deals with two of the previous companies involved in the development—Paramount Pictures, responsible for international distribution rights, and 20th Century Fox, which received the right to part of the gross—the Watchmen adaptation was finally released on March 2009.