Damon Lindelof And HBO's WATCHMEN Won't Be A Direct Adaptation Of The Alan Moore Comic
Though we know little about Damon Lindelof's forthcoming adaptation of the Watchmen comics, many fans still remain excited. Now, the showrunner himself explains how he plans to adapt the graphic novel...
Alan Moore’s acclaimed comic book series Watchmen is commonly heralded as one of the greatest stories in comic, so interest in a live-action adaptation of the graphic novel has always been high. Even though Alan Moore himself hasn’t shown any excitement over the prospect of anyone adapting his work.
Yet, back in 2009, a live-action adaptation of the series is exactly what fans got when the Zack Snyder film arrived in theaters. And even though the movie didn’t receive the same amount of praise as its comic book counterpart, many fans would say it was a mostly faithful adaptation of the books. Still, there were certain elements from the books that were omitted or cut from the film.
So, when it was announced HBO would be creating a Watchmen series with Damon Lindelof, many fans began to hope they could see the omitted elements explored. But recent comments from Lindelof suggest the series could feature plenty of deviations from the books.
To explain how he plans to treat the source material, Lindelof first explained how Noah Hawley (Legion) treated the Fargo film when creating the Fargo television series:
“[Adapting] may be the right word, at the end of the day. Do you watch Fargo at all? I wouldn't call Noah Hawley's version of Fargo an adaptation because the movie exists inside of his world, and so everything that happened in the movie Fargo, it does precede the television show Fargo. So they find a bag of money in the first season, and you go, 'Oh, that came from the movie.' But it's also, Noah is pulling from other areas of the Coen brothers' canon, so it evokes like Lebowski, but it's also his own thing.”
In other words, fans shouldn’t expect the series to be a strict panel-for-panel recreation, which fans mostly got in the Zack Snyder film.
Lindelof even compares his treatment of the Watchmen source material to how Moore created the series, noting how Moore based his characters off of those from Charleton Comics:
“That's the spirit of what he did with Watchmen in the first place. It's not to take [anything from him]. He created this -- it's an original -- but the basis for that world is on these other characters that DC had just bought from this comics company called Charlton. And he did rips on those characters.”
The showrunner even defended adaptations of Watchmen against Alan Moore, who is staunchly against them, by saying the writer is being hypocritical as he himself “told iconic stories with characters that he didn't create.”
All things consider, is it obvious that Lindelof is very much a fan of Moore's work and of the Watchmen comic, but he is clealy comfortable with departing from the source material and is confident in his decision. Whether the end product will be good, and whether fans will accept changes to the acclaimed comic, however,is something that we'll have to wait to find out. Though, with Lindelof's previous collaboration with HBO being the acclaimed series The Leftovers, fans should be hopeful about the outcome.