HBO Hoping to Move Forward With ‘Watchmen’ Series as Soon as Possible

With Game of Thrones ending, HBO has high hopes that their viewers will stick around to watch the Watchmen, finally answering the age old question posited by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in their original DC Comics/Vertigo series.

HBO President Casey Bloys was recently speaking at an event for the Television Critics Association where he spoke fondly about Damon Lindelof‘s attempt to adapt Watchmen for television, revealing they want to get it on television as soon as possible.

“I have very high hopes,” said Bloys, according to Variety editor Debra Birnbaum. The HBO exec went on to praise the script and the casting for the series, and said he expects to see the pilot in the next week.

Speaking about when fans can expect to see the series on HBO, Bloys gave a surprisingly forthcoming answer: “Hopefully as soon as possible.”

Watchmen has assembled an all-star lineup of talent that’s likely to incite interest from casual viewers who might not be familiar with the revered source material. Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Don Johnson, and Tim Blake Nelson have all been revealed as part of the cast.

But even despite the stellar actors in the series, HBO and Lindelof have received some criticisms from fans of the series and supporters of writer Alan Moore, who continue to denounce any sort of adaptation of continuation of the work for being against the creator’s wishes.

Moore created the concepts with Gibbons as they were based on DC’s Charlton Comics characters such as the Question, Blue Beetle, and Captain Atom. But with the contract Moore and Gibbons received at the time, they were to take ownership of the property if DC stopped publishing the series. But the collected edition of Watchmen became one of the most successful publication for DC, and they have since kept editions in print in perpetuity since its release.

That is but one reason why Moore had a falling out with DC Comics and has since denounced the publisher, and he refuses to accept payments from them for Watchmen’s continued profit.

Lindelof addressed these issues in a lengthy statement posted on his Instagram account, saying he has no plans of telling the same story Moore told because he would only fail at such a feat. Instead, his series is being treated as a “remix.”

“We have no desire to ‘adapt’ the twelve issues Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons created thirty years ago,” Lindelof wrote. “Those issues are sacred ground and they will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted.

“They will, however, be remixed. Because the bass lines in those familiar tracks are just too good and we’d be fools not to sample them. 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.”

We’ll learn more about Watchmen and what HBO has planned for it in the coming weeks.