HBO’s Superhero Series ‘Watchmen’ Will Be Completely Different From The Movie
"Those original twelve issues are our Old Testament."
HBO’s adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel Watchmen will not be an adaptation at all, according to writer Damon Lindelof. Rather, the series will “remix” the property, telling a completely new story that takes place the same world as the comics but is set in the present day.
In a long, long letter posted to his Instagram on Wednesday, Lindelof — best known as the co-creator of Lost and The Leftovers — assured fans that he and his team have “no desire” to adapt the comics. “Those issues are sacred ground and will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted,” he wrote. “They will however be remixed. The bass lines in those familiar tracks are just too good and we’d be fools not to sample them.”
“Those original twelve issues are our Old Testament,” Lindelof continued. “When the New Testament came along it did not erase what came before it. Creation. The Garden of Eden. Abraham and Isaac. The Flood. It all happened. And so it will be with Watchmen.”
While the series will take place after the events of the original story, Lindelof has also insisted that it won’t be a sequel.
“This story will be set in the world its creators painstakingly built…but in the tradition of the work that inspired it, this new story must be original,” he wrote. “It has to vibrate with the seismic unpredictability of its own tectonic plates. It must ask new questions and explore the world through a fresh lens.”
“Most importantly, it must be contemporary. The Old Testament was specific to the Eighties of Reagan and Thatcher and Gorbachev. Ours needs to resonate with the frequency of Trump and May and Putin.”
Of course it’s entirely possible we won’t see any of this. HBO greenlit the Watchmen pilot back in September, but whether it gets a series order remains to be seen.
Watchmen was previously adapted into a feature film by Zack Snyder in 2009, with the final product dividing critics and fans.