Lost and The Leftovers veteran writer/producer Damon Lindelof is at work on his most ambitious and potentially controversial TV project yet, adapting Watchmen for HBO. Looking to head off criticism (or at least address it before he's swamped with it), Lindelof released a long open letter about his plans via Instagram.
You can read his full statement here, which jumps around in time much like Dr. Manhattan (there are fortunately no attached pics of Lindelof painted blue and naked), but the pertinent chunks are quoted below.
"Those issues are sacred ground and they will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted," Lindelof says of the original Watchmen run by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins. "They will, however, be remixed. Because 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. 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. The Comedian died. Dan and Laurie fell in love. Ozymandias saved the world and Dr. Manhattan left it just after blowing Rorschach to pieces in the bitter cold of Antarctica.
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. 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 and the horse that he rides around on, shirtless. And speaking of Horsemen, The End of the World is off the table, which means the heroes and villains – as if the two are distinguishable – are playing for different stakes entirely. Some of the characters will be unknown. New faces. New masks to cover them. We also intend to revisit the past century of Costumed Adventuring through a surprising yet familiar set of eyes... And it is here we will be taking our greatest risks."
Lindelof also says that he wrote the Moore, who is famously against any adaptation of the work, but doesn't say whether he got a reply. He does, however, offer that Gibbons has given his blessing. The pilot is in the works now, and the cable channel has ordered more scripts so the show is ready to go if that first instalment passes muster.
Keep up to date with all the latest movie news, click here to subscribe to Empire on Great Magazines and have the latest issue delivered to your door every month.