Story by Mark Beresford
Watchmen has been widely regarded as the pinnacle of graphic novels for over thirty years now. Originally created by the dream teaming of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore, the story is a dense interweaving of moral conflict and political instability amongst the grip of fear. Though Zack Snyder did his best to tell this tale though the 2009 blockbuster of the same name, it didn’t have enough to summarise the grand scale of the comics and faced a significant amount of criticism from fans as well as producing poor box office numbers.
In a more positive move, HBO have now announced the epic tale will be made into an episodic TV series under the helm of director Damon Lindelof.
Lindelof himself is no stranger to the sort of large productions having worked previously on Lost, Prometheus, Star Trek and World War Z and clearly HBO has proven their ability to commit to scale in a similar way from book adaptations, having thrown endless money at Game of Thrones.
While we don’t know yet where in the Watchmen cannon the TV show would be placed, the speculation is that the announcement Instagram post from Linelof was of a partial statue of Hollis Mason aka Nite Owl. The minor detail may just have been the only thing available in his office at the time, or it may be that the TV show will feature more heavily in the Minutemen story arc as opposed to the modern day in order to follow a week to week format easier.
Both Moore and Gibbs are yet to officially comment on the project and it’s not expected that they will be involved, given Moore’s previous comments surrounding books being ‘unfilmable’ and their specificity to comics.
Warner Brothers has previously shown interested in a ‘reboot’ of the franchise given its cult status, so moving the characters to a TV format and potentially utilising the Minutemen or even Before Watchmen stories to help build on the fanbase would be a positive move towards another film.
For the moment HBO has only officially ordered a pilot with additional scripts being produced for consideration, but with Game Of Thrones reaching completion by mid 2019, there is already expectation that Watchmen may be looked at to take on as their flagship title alongside Westworld.
Pic via DC
