Looks like Damon Lindelof may be going back to work for HBO. Fresh off the critically acclaimed series finale of The Leftovers, Lindelof is in talks to develop an adaptation of the comic book series Watchmen to the cable network.
This will be HBO’s second attempt at developing a series based on the landmark DC Comics miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The premium channel had kicked the tires on a Watchmen project in 2014. Sources say Lindelof’s take on the series would be starting over from scratch independent of that effort.
Premiering in 1985, Watchmen was a serious-minded deconstruction of superhero comics loosely inspired by characters from the Charlton Comics library, which were owned by DC. Set in a universe in which the appearance of costumed heroes in the mid-20th Century had altered the course of history – leading to US victory in Vietnam and a Nixon presidency that stretched into the mid-1980s – Watchmen followed a group of crimefighters investigating the murder of one of their own.
In the process, those characters – including Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach – uncover a conspiracy with enormous implications.
HBO declined to comment on the project.
Watchmen was adapted into a feature film produced by Warner Bros and directed by Zack Snyder in 2009. No deal is yet in place for the HBO project, which will be unrelated to that movie produced by Warner Bros Television, where Lindelof is under an overall deal. – Reuters/Debra Birnbaum
