HBO orders “Watchmen” pilot

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. Set in a universe in which the appearance of costumed heroes in the mid-20th Century had altered the course of history — leading to US victory in Vietnam and a Nixon presidency that stretched into the mid-1980s — “Watchmen” followed a group of crime-fighters investigating the murder of one of their own. In the process, the characters — including Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach — uncover a conspiracy with enormous implications.

HBO had previously taken a crack at developing “Watchmen” as a series in 2014, but abandoned that effort. “Watchmen” is being produced by Warner Bros. Television.

Source: Variety