Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

I would watch an Adaptation-esque Watchmen show that's all about a fictionalized Lindelof wrecking the entire endeavor.

Hopefully with an episode centered around a fictionalized Moore breaking into the HBO offices to beat him senseless.

'Forget about who's watching the Watchmen, Lindelof, and start worrying about who's watching your ass!'

I guess I'm not convinced that some of the structural elements are that important to retain. I certainly wasn't flipping back and forth to experience Doc Manhattan's view of time as I was reading. And something like the closed loop can be done in film.

Chapter 6 (the Rorschach chapter) being symmetrical still amazes me after all these years (the midpoint is Adrian whacking his assassin).

Once they announced this I could immediately see what they were thinking by talking about this project:
- The book's structure is so important, episodic TV would be able to handle this so much better than a film. We were all saying this back in 1985
- The superhero-IP frenzy in movies will not die down for a long time, I think Marvel has stuff planned out until, what, 2025 or something
- HBO specializes in putting the reader in a somewhat familiar environment/genre and then ladleing on tons of sex and violence (it's Rome, but with tits; it's the Old West, but with tits; it's sword-and-sorcery, but with ...) - this would extend the same pattern into the superhero genre
- I can only imagine the panic in HBO offices as Thrones gets closer to its final air date

... 1986, not '85

... and 'they announced' = 'Variety reported'. I need an editor

If someone was really going to run with the adaptation and stay true to the *spirit* of the source material, they would make a meta-movie about superhero movies that doesn't reference the original book at all

yeah, this is otm

best metafictional comic book movie remains american splendor, of course

I can only imagine the panic in HBO offices as Thrones gets closer to its final air date

I'm sure this is true but given the recent failure of Snyder's Watchmen I wouldn't think this has much built-in cachet. They are def worried about not having a cash cow in the Sex and the City/Sopranos/Thrones mold in the hopper though. Westworld was garbage.

they have a couple decent comedies at the moment (Silicon Valley, Insecure) but they don't have their next prestige hour-long drama. RIP Vinyl...

Well, there is The Deuce coming up in Sept.

I thought Westworld was amazing and adored it, but ymmv

Also from what I can tell something being 'recent' does not prevent anybody from adapting it again right away, the Spiderfilms gave me whiplash

they would make a meta-movie about superhero movies that doesn't reference the original book at all

isn't this Birdman?

Well, there is The Deuce coming up dropping in Sept.

fixed

But yeah I guess the point I'm trying to make is the marketing for this show would write itself and have the benefit of being congruent with the present superhero market saturation.

Remember HBO was really playing on the edge with Thrones, as there wasn't exactly a sword-and-sorcery thing going on in the culture at the time.

Lindelof is really made for stuff like this, too, I would not mind him being the guy rather than Gilliam to have a crack at it as a TV show.

As to whether we *need* it, no, we do not need these endless reboots. But that's exactly what I thought before Westworld aired

as there wasn't exactly a sword-and-sorcery thing going on in the culture at the time.

all those kids that loved Harry Potter grew up and were excited about prospect of murderboobs

Ha yeah I did forget about Potter

and immediately prior to that: LOTR

(actually those probably overlapped a bit, I forget?)

That was 2001-2003, I think - S1 of Thrones was 2011

no I meant LOTR and Harry Potter overlapped

can't imagine Moore being ok with option-ing [Top Ten] though

if we're concerned about Moore's objection to properties being optioned, why does this thread exist?

"Lindelof is really made for stuff like this, too, I would not mind him being the guy rather than Gilliam to have a crack at it as a TV show."

yeah it's too late for Gilliam to do this and do a good job. His last several films have been awful and I'm not holding out hope that Don Quioxte is going to be any good either. This would have been a good project for him in the mid 90's.

if we're concerned about Moore's objection to properties being optioned, why does this thread exist?

does Moore not own Top 10 anymore? I can't remember. I was only bringing it up in terms of the likelihood of projects moving forward (since he doesn't own Watchmen obviously his opinion on that one is moot)

I hope they're saving Terry Gilliam for The Incredibles.

Terry Gilliam's latest films haven't been awful. Zero Theorem was decent but it felt like an xeroxed copy of Gilliam's usual tics

does Moore not own Top 10 anymore? I can't remember.

Jim Lee has been a vice president of Warners' third-largest IP farm for 18 years because he got Moore to create a line of four series work-for-hire and then sold his entire company to DC, who couldn't get Moore to work for them any other way, because they'd behaved so deceitfully around the copyright to Watchmen

https://www.streetlib.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/capitalism.gif

I'm torn between respecting the wishes of the creator (don't make movies of my comics, please burn all my novels etc) and the desire to see 'protected' texts played with, transformed, desecrated.

Certainly agree w/ Moore that DC's constant returning to comics he created thirty or more years ago indicates a certain amount of creative bankruptcy.

as opposed to Moore just riffing on shit that was created a hundred years ago

^^^

Someone should make a comic about Moore getting increasingly pissed off about the shitty adaptations made of his work and after investigating and pulling strings he finally discovers that the responsible party is a cabal of the fictional characters created by others which he built his career around.

After he hangs himself to dispel the hallucinations we find out the real culprit was guy fawkes all along

He speaks! Sorta.

“All I can say at this time is, as of right now I haven’t had any meetings at HBO about Watchmen. I’ve been very vocal about my love for those 12 issues that eventually became a graphic novel, that they were completely and totally inspiring for all the storytelling that I did subsequently, and that I owe a debt to it. So is that piece of material something that’s really interesting to me? Yes, but I do feel like I have to weigh the balance of ‘Should it exist?’ before I decide to take it on, and I’m sort of in that process now. I hold the source material in such high regard it would literally be the worst feeling in the world to screw it up. So I take it very seriously, there’s a lot of responsibility. All I can say is I’m thinking about Watchmen a lot right now, nothing official.”

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.