HBO officially watches the Watchmen
After rumours started earlier in the year regarding a Damon Lindelof-penned adaptation of Watchmen on everyone’s favourite network – HBO yo – we are finally getting confirmation on this happening. Lindelof posted a picture on Instagram confirming day one of writing has begun on this latest adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal comic book.
Although Lindelof was the internet’s whipping boy for a while due to his involvement as co-showrunner on Lost, he’s managed to bounce back recently due to his work on the HBO show The Leftovers. We don’t want to go on a tangent about how Lost had more highs than lows and the whole backlash was absurd, so let’s just say: happy to see Lindelof involved on this one.
At this point HBO has only ordered scripts and a pilot for the show, which means it’s not certain yet this will actually appear on a screen of your choice. In the past HBO has opted not to go give series orders to pilots by American Horror Story’s Ryan Murphy, Six Feet Under’s Alan Ball, Entourage’s Doug Ellin – no tears shed there -, and perhaps most noteworthy an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections starring Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
If the Watchmen series does go past pilot, the question is what it will look like. We weren’t too fond of the tone the Zack Snyder adaptation took, but we can’t deny it stuck to the plot of the comic book quite closely overall. Would a TV series just add more depth to the characters, and fix the ending, or could we see a show that ties in The Black Freighter stuff directly (as opposed to in the director’s cut Snyder produced), or even borrows from the recent non-Alan Moore written Watchmen comics?
On another note, due to HBO’s involvement, could we see the rare case where a TV cast bests a movie’s cast? With Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Jackie Early Haley, and Matthew Goode all having had recent stints on television, we can’t help but wonder who will be playing the comic book “heroes” this time around.
