Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

It's happening! Or something.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZO0ijeDh43/

...uh huh.

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/watchmen-hbo-damon-lindelof-1202818921/

“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 will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted.”

“They will however be remixed,” he continued. “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.”

He went on to say that the show he is creating will not be a sequel to the original either.

“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 said. “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. Most importantly, it must be contemporary. The Old Testament was specific to the Eighties of Reagan and Thatcher and Gorbachev. Ours needs to resonate with the frequency of Trump and May and Putin and the horse that he rides around on, shirtless. And speaking of Horsemen, The End of the World is off the table…which means the heroes and villains–as if the two are distinguishable–are playing for different stakes entirely.”

lmao Lindelof you crazy asshole

Need a Mendoza.gif except the scream is "LINDELOFFFFFFF"

honestly based purely on The Leftovers and the fact that this is guaranteed to piss off funnybook nerds I'm convinced it's going to be great

god give me strength

I mean you already got a hyper-faithful screen version so why not just get real fuckin weird with it

this will not be "real fuckin weird"

it will also not be good

the way he ruined the last few seasons of Lost does not make me confident that this series will be good.

I mean you already got a hyper-faithful screen version

ban Simon from having opinions

imo a hyper-faithful version would have had an embedded pirate television show

A director's cut with 24 minutes of additional footage was released in July 2009. The "Ultimate Cut" edition incorporated the animated comic Tales of the Black Freighter into the narrative as it was in the original graphic novel, lengthening the runtime to 3 hours and 35 minutes, and was released on November 3, 2009.

nah you're alright

hyper faithful version would have just been static shots of the comic book pages

if it's half as weird as the leftovers it will be real fuckin weird

honestly based purely on The Leftovers and the fact that this is guaranteed to piss off funnybook nerds I'm convinced it's going to be great

― Simon H., Tuesday, May 22, 2018 3:43 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think someone might've misled you on how liking things works, but whatever does it for you, I guess.

This sounds dumb and bad and unnecessary and I can't understand why anyone beyond the people making money off of it would want it to happen.

Those issues are sacred ground

"The wishes and moral rights of Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons, however, are worthless shit that I will spend many, many millions of dollars to disrespect and dishonour."

word

This is basically 'okay, I know there was already a film adaptation of (let's say) A Confederacy of Dunces a decade ago, but I think it would make a really great TV show. No, we're not re-adapting it or formulating a sequel. We're taking the beats, the essence of the novel, and we're gonna shake things up a little. Like what if Mr. Ignatius J. Reilly was actually disgruntled blogger Ms. Ignatia ORLY? What if that? I envision a minimum of five seasons. I've already picked out a yacht. Thank you, HBO.'

he explicitly says Gibbons has given his blessing (although I don't blame you for not reading the entire thing)

Watchmen is an obsessively-detailed, hermetically-sealed world where pretty much everything worth exploring is explored within the text itself and which is tailor-made for its specific medium. I'm hard-pressed to think of a work less in need of adapting, let alone adapting twice (and let alone everything DC has done to strip the corpse down to the bone over the past several years).

he explicitly says Gibbons has given his blessing (although I don't blame you for not reading the entire thing)

I didn't know there was anything to read, but am doing so now. "Dave said he would offer me his blessing if I really felt I needed it to calm my soul" is even less of an endorsement than Gibbons' PR statement on Before Watchmen, "You know and I know that these are worthless wastes of paper, but I got paid already."

speaking of which, some high-quality endorsements on Lindelof's instagram:

jimmypalmiotti RED THE SILK SPECTRE MINISERIES that came out a few years ago...you will fall in love with it.

we all know what happened to Jack Kirby and yet we're first in line for every Marvel film

uh no, ppl who know what happened to Kirby explicitly refused to see even Marvel films by directors they were intersted in while Marvel was actively suing Kirby's heirs

yeah I was not down with that shit.

I saw Guardians out of interst in Gunn, but only once Mantlo's brother had made press statements of "I'm not allowed to publicly say that Marvel gave any money towards the care of my permanently brain damaged brother because they will not create any kind of precedent for creator credit or royalties or charity or health care, but WINK WINK Bill would be happpy WINK WINK if you go and see it WINK"



we all know what happened to Jack Kirby and yet we're first in line for every Marvel film

^ this is an open declaration of "I don't actually get it"

I read it as an admission of guilt

Lindelof's description of this make me think of the first season of Fargo, which was quite good.

On the other hand, Damon Lindelof is not Noah Hawley.

Correct, his last series was way better than any Hawley stuff

Tbh FARGO probably is a great comparison point in terms of spinning off a great isolated, self contained work into a longer, expanded format, I just personally think it sucks shit

in the tradition of the work that inspired it, this new story must be original

chef kiss

Nice catch. Although maybe Lindelof is totally aware of what he's saying and the show will actually feature slightly altered Watchmen characters in the same way Watchmen features slightly altered Charlton characters.

(Narrator: Lindelof has no idea what he's saying.)

not here for the lindelof slander by people who haven't seen leftovers

like the mother of a murderer cryin that hes changed hes changed hes a good boy my boy, mfers sitting here in 2018 telling me i have to see the latest thing this cunt was involved in before i judge

a lot of people whose opinions i respect tell me the leftovers is good and i’ll def get around to watching it at some point but if u don’t think this next project will be the perfect catalyst for lindelof to get right back on his bullshit and then some u are frankly out of ur goddamn mind

not here for the lindelof slander by people who haven't seen leftovers

voodoo knows what's up

Damon Laurence Lindelof (born April 24, 1973) is an American screenwriter and producer. He was the co-creator and showrunner of the television series Lost (2004–10). He has written for and produced Crossing Jordan (2001–04) and wrote for Nash Bridges (2000–01). Lindelof also co-wrote the science fiction films Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Prometheus (2012), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Tomorrowland (2015). He wildly smacked his ape paws against the keys for long enough that he eventually and wholly accidentally co-created the TV series The Leftovers for HBO, adapted from the novel by Tom Perrotta.

it's almost like he writes for money!

Exclusively so, even!

The Babaloo Mandel of our generation.

how quickly we forget akiva goldsman

what really haunts me about Goldsman is that he's credited with most of the best episodes of Fringe

i choose to believe that fringe was orchestrated by alternate-universe versions of goldsman, abrams, orci and kurtzman, who all returned to their dimension after their work was done

lmao

anyway to sum up The Case For Why I Think This Will Be Good so I can just lie down and die on this hill

1. the vast majority of the stuff that was bad about Lost mostly comes down to poor planning and production mishaps, which Lindelof has pretty freely acknowledged and taken his knocks for (hell, he even consulted Mike Schur on What Not To Do when planning a high-concept TV show)
2. The Leftovers slaps and I would put money down on this using a bunch of the same creatives. lest we forget TV is a deeply collaborative medium and if nothing else the dude has proven he can put together a very talented bench
3. the direction laid out in the letter (diversify, find new angles, no more apocalypses) all sound good and productive to me

Of all the terrible ideas about Watchmen, this one sounds like the least terrible

The best idea remains: do nothing, give Alan Moore rights back

I'm willing to buy bg's theory on Fringe

Nash Bridges was good, this is the hill I'm going to die on

i do apreciate simon's argument that lindelof's watchmen's gonna be good because he'll hire writers who are better than he is

Trying to think of things that are easier than hiring writers who are better than Damon Lindelof. Eating, breathing...I'm sure there's a third.

Ahem, excuse me, just burped out a writer who created Lost and The Leftovers, my bad

anyway to sum up The Case For Why I Think This Will Be Good so I can just lie down and die on this hill

none of these explain why it is a sensible, useful, or not-offensive idea to do

The sensible and useful reasons are "to make money, because capitalism" and the not-offensive reason is "gtfo with your hand-wringing on behalf of a relatively small number of malcontents, because capitalism."