Be it through accident or design, Zack Snyder has gained a reputation for directing comic book blockbusters that prove to be as lengthy as they are divisive.
The filmmaker is responsible for the three longest superhero movies ever made thanks to HBO Max’s 242-minute Justice League, the 215-minute Ultimate Cut of Watchmen and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s 183-minute Ultimate Edition. All three split opinion right down the middle among critics, but each has cultivated a sizeable fanbase since their respective releases.
For a long time, it looked as though Watchmen would never get made, with countless writers and filmmakers becoming attached to the project before eventually dropping out. Many called it unfilmable, but Snyder worked his way around that by transplanting the imagery from the page directly onto the screen.
Watchmen ended up bombing at the box office after earning $185 million on a $130 million budget, but reviews did largely lean towards the positive end of the scale. A lot of fans and general audiences hated it, though, but that hasn’t stopped the theatrical cut of the film ascending to tenth position on the Netflix most-watched list as per FlixPatrol, jumping almost fifteen places in the space of 24 hours.