HBO’s Watchmen is an American superhero drama limited series based on the 1986 DC Comics series of the same title, created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The TV series was created for HBO by Damon Lindelof, who also served as an executive producer and writer. Its ensemble cast includes Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Andrew Howard, Jacob Ming-Trent, Tom Mison, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Louis Gossett Jr. and Jeremy Irons. Jean Smart and Hong Chau joined the cast in later episodes. (Wikipedia)
Once more, DC Comics is milking the Watchmen teat to see how much more dollars and cents they can extract from this property, as if the travesty of Before Watchmen and The Doomsday Clock were not bad enough.
Damon Lindelof’s re-imagining of the Moore/Gibbon masterpiece – going by the first teaser – seems to only superficially connect with the source material. Sure, there appears to be a whole gang of Rorsharchs and it seems that Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) is still alive.
Other than that, there seems to be absolutely no reason to even call this Watchmen at all, except as a cheap ploy to attach the source material’s goodwill to this new series.
According to the synopsis, HBO’s Watchmen takes place in contemporary America, where costumed heroes are outlawed and the doomsday clock continues to tick.
That’s it? That description could fit any generic superhero narrative without calling it Watchmen. As far as I am concerned, Watchmen was/is a fixed story set in an 1980s alternate reality, with a definite beginning and an ambiguous end. Any attempt at continuation is an affront and insult to the original work.
And Damon Lindelof calls himself a fan of Alan Moore?
Watch HBO’s Watchmen on HBO Max.