Damon Lindelof lays out his wild premise for HBO’s Watchmen

This October, The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof is bringing a new Watchmen story to life for HBO. Lindelof finally pulls the curtain back on the show in a detailed interview with Entertainment Weekly. Let’s peek inside.

For some time now, we’ve been piecing together information about Watchmen from the show’s Instagram page and the few trailers that have aired. Finally, we have some details.

Taking place 30 years after the events of Watchmen, HBO’s show will feature a few characters from Alan Moore’s original graphic novel — Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias (Jeremy Irons), Laurie Blake/Silk Specter (Jean Smart), and Doctor Manhattan — alongside new ones like Tim Blake Nelson’s Looking Glass and Regina King’s Angela Abar, who fights crime under the superhero name Sister Night, who sounds like the coolest nun at the convent.

“Look, [the new series] certainly fits into the ‘sequel’ box, and definitely doesn’t fit into the ‘reboot’ box,” said Lindelof, clarifying something HBO has been dancing around for months. “We treat the original 12 issues as canon. They all happened. We haven’t done any revisionist history, but we can maneuver in between the cracks and crevices and find new stories there.”

"[W]e wanted to make sure our first episode felt like the beginning of a new story rather than a continuation of an old story. That’s what I think a sequel is — the continuation of an old story."

In the world of this show, Robert Redford — the actor — has been President of the United States for the past 28 years. (The actual actor isn’t in the show, he just won the presidency and held onto it way past his sell-by date somehow). He’s brought radical changes to America: cell phones and the internet have been outlawed and fossil fuels are a thing of the past. “There’s also this legislation that’s passed, Victims Of Racial Violence Legislation, which is a form of reparations that are colloquially known as “Redford-ations,” Lindelof explained. “It’s a lifetime tax exemption for victims of, and the direct descendants of, designated areas of racial injustice throughout America’s history, the most important of which, as it relates to our show, is the Tulsa massacre of 1921.”

"That legislation had a ripple effect into another piece of legalization, DoPA, the Defense of Police Act, which allows police to hide their face behind masks because they were being targeted by terrorist organizations for protecting the victims of the initial act."

Okay, so the show clearly won’t touch on any controversial topics. Nothing but easy-breezy light fluffy fun over here.

But seriously, engaging with hot button real-world issues in a superhero show about masked vigilantes could be risky. Does that worry Lindelof? “I’ve had a lot of reservations about a lot of the creative choices made in the show,” he said. “I don’t think any of the choices were made without reservations and conversations and ultimately a decision. I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to defend every decision I made, but I’ll be able to explain why I made it.”

Lindelof also talked about which cast members impressed him most. While he mentions Irons, Smart, Nelson and Louis Gosset Jr., it’s King he gushes about:

"I can’t say enough amazing things about Regina King. The opportunity to make her the star of the show is one of the reasons this was worth doing. It’s not that Regina hasn’t had opportunities to show the world what an incredible actor she is, but to be at the center of the show is a pretty big deal. She’s able to surprise me constantly with her choices as a performer even though I worked with her on The Leftovers for a season and I’ve seen everything she’s she’s ever done going back to 227 and Southland. Yet she’s still able to make choices that make me go, What?"

In May of 2018, Lindelof wrote a letter to fans of Watchmen and explained his vision for the show:

“We also intend to revisit the past century of Costumed Adventuring through a surprising yet familiar set of eyes and it’s here we’ll be taking our greatest risk,” he wrote in the letter. Was he talking about any familiar set of eyes in particular?

“You should be in exactly the place that you are at the end of the pilot, which is: ‘I’m not sure what he’s talking about yet,'” Lindelof said. “By the end of the sixth episode, it will be clear who I was talking about. There won’t be any space for debate. I think people will start to theorize who I was talking about prior to the sixth episode, but that’s the one that makes the subtext text.”

We do like a good puzzle box show.

Finally, Lindelof talked about nabbing Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails fame to score Watchmen. “I called HBO and said, ‘Look, they haven’t done TV but it’s worth an inquiry.’ And [HBO drama executive] Francesca Orsi said, ‘This is the weirdest thing but their reps called us this morning and asked about Watchmen.’ Within 48 hours of that call, Trent and Atticus and I were in a room together and it turns out they’re huge Watchmen fans. They signed up on faith and faith alone.”

"They get the scripts at the same time the actors do. They started writing the music even before we shot the pilot so we can get a sense in our heads of what it would sound like. It’s been incredible. They’re doing some cool stuff I can’t talk about stuff inside the world of Watchmen musically that I think is going to be really cool. They go deep."

The mystery deepens.

You can read EW’s full interview with Lindelof here. Watchmen premieres on October 20, only on HBO.

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h/t Huffpost