HBO has ordered a pilot for Watchmen, the new drama series it is developing with The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof. The premium service has also committed to additional backup scripts for the series. HBO confirmed the pilot order and script commitment Wednesday, one day after Lindelof teased on Instagram that work had begun in the writers room on the project.
Watchmen is based on the landmark DC Comics miniseries of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The series, later collected as a graphic novel, 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 U.S. 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.
On Tuesday, Lindelof posted a picture of a statue modeled after an image from the comics, and captioned the photo “Day One.” The statue appeared to be placed on a table in the middle of a writers room.
HBO had previously taken a crack at developing Watchmen as a series in 2014, but abandoned that effort. Lindelof, whose show The Leftovers ended its three-season run on HBO earlier this year, is starting from scratch with his take. Variety reported on HBO’s development plans for the project in June.
Watchmen is being produced by Warner Bros. Television, where Lindelof has an overall deal.
