Who watches the Watchmen: all the updates on HBO’s upcoming take on the classic graphic novel

HBO’s adaptation of the classic graphic novel Watchmen is officially coming to small screens. After ordering a pilot episode last year, the network has picked up the show for a full first season, which will debut in 2019.

Along with the announcement of the series pickup and roughly when we’ll be able to expect the show, the network announced the cast for the series, which will include Regina King (Southland), Jeremy Irons (Justice League), Tim Blake Nelson (Wormwood), and more.

When The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof brings his version of Watchmen to HBO, it will be as an original story with new characters, not a retelling of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel. “We have no desire to ‘adapt’ the twelve issues Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons created thirty years ago,” Lindelof wrote in a lengthy letter on Instagram. “Those issues are sacred ground and they will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced not rebooted.”

The five-page letter touches on Lindelof’s personal connection to the series as well as his vision for his new spin on it. The original Watchmen is canon, he says, but the show will neither be a sequel nor a reboot. Rather, he likens it to being “remixed,” because “the bass lines in those familiar tracks are just too good and we’d be fools not to sample them.” The show will have a contemporary spin, with Lindelof checking off names like Trump and Putin. “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,” he writes. “It has to vibrate with the seismic unpredictability of its own tectonic plates. It must ask new questions and explore the world through a fresh lens.”

Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a step closer to being adapted once more, this time by Lost and The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof at the helm. HBO has given the project a pilot order and ordered additional scripts, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Yesterday, Lindelof posted an image to Instagram that depicted a trophy given to one of the heroes, Hollis Mason, when he retired from crime fighting in the comics.

Who watches the Watchmen? Maybe you, soon, on HBO. The network is reportedly in talks with Damon Lindelof — co-creator of Lost and The Leftovers — to adapt the seminal graphic novel for the small screen.

It’s not the first time that Watchmen — written by Alan Moore, with art by Dave Gibbons — has been adapted for screen. Director Zack Snyder turned out his take on the story in 2009, giving it lavish slow-mo shots and receiving mixed reviews in the process. HBO, too, tried in 2014 to get a Watchmen TV project off the ground in 2014, apparently speaking to Snyder about a deal in discussions that eventually fell apart.