Damon Lindelof, the prolific writer/ producer behind critically acclaimed series like Lost and The Leftovers along with movies like Star Trek and Prometheus has decided to open up to fans regarding his upcoming series for HBO based on the Vertigo series Watchmen from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Lindelof took to his Instagram account to share a letter with fans of the original series as an attempt to assure them that he understands the muddled history of Watchmen and its creators fight with the publisher over the characters and story. He assures fans that his version of the story is not an adaptation of Moore’s work, but a “remix” of the original story.
“I have an immense amount of respect for [Watchmen co-creator] Alan Moore. He is an extraordinary talent of mythic proportion. I wrote him a letter, parts of which are not dissimilar to this one, because I owed him an explanation as to why I’m defying his wishes [in working on the series].” He writes.
(I’m not going to hash out the entirety of his letter. I will post a link to it at the end of this article.)
Lindelof does go on to give some details about the world this new series takes place in while showing reverence to the original source material. “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. To be clear. Watchmen is canon.”
It looks like the new series will be set after these events with new, original characters akin to DC Comics current Doomsday Clock storyline by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. According to Lindelof’s letter, the series will not be a sequel either saying; “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.” Later, he adds, “Some of the characters will be unknown. New faces. New masks to cover them.”
Here is the link to the full letter here.
What do you think of Lindelof’s letter? Does it make you more open to seeing his Watchmen series on HBO or not? Let me know what you think in the comments below.