If you had any doubts that HBO might back down from the Watchmen TV series adaptation, you can put them to rest now. After announcing the project back in 2017, the network has now revealed the cast for the series’ pilot episode.
Regina King (The Leftovers), Don Johnson (Miami Vice), Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?), Louis Gossett Jr. (An Officer and a Gentleman), Adelaide Clemens (Rectify) and Andrew Howard (Hatfields & McCoys) are all set to star in the pilot but the characters they will play are kept under wraps.
Watchmen tv series is being developed by The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof, who will also serve as a writer and executive producer, while Nicole Kassell (The Killing) is attached as director.
While HBO is still to reveal the plot of the series, Lindelof recently went on Instagram and shared some of the details about the project. According to him, Watchmen TV series will be “remixed” version of the original story and will be set in present day.
“Those original 12 issues [of Watchmen] 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,” wrote Lindelof. “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. To be clear. Watchmen is canon. … We are not making a ‘sequel’ either. 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. … Some of the characters will be unknown. New faces. New masks to cover them.”
HBO entered the negotiation to give cult DC’s comic Watchmen a television series adaptation back in 2015, with the director of the 2009’s Watchmen, Zack Snyder participating in the project. Then in 2017, Snyder decided to leave the project with Damon Lindelof stepping in.
