HBO recently announced that it would be releasing new Watchmen series in October, and released a featurette yesterday providing a sneak peek into the upcoming series. The series will be based on the 1986 DC comic of the same name and will be the first adaptation of the material since the 2009 film adaptation from Zack Snyder.
The featurette provides a few new details about what the new show will look like. The Watchmen series, like the comic book, will be set in an alternative universe full of masked fugitives and vigilantes, putting a darker twist on the average superhero story. As Gizmodo notes in their recent article on the show, masks play a significant thematic role in Watchmen. In the world of this story, a mask “blurs the lines of culpability for the evil in the world.” We also see that some of the comic’s most popular characters will be making an appearance in this show, including Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan.
Watchmen will be led by executive producer Damon Lindelof, known for his previous work on the Emmy-award winning show Lost and the HBO show The Leftovers. In May of last year, Lindelof posted a letter to fans of Watchmen on Instagram, informing them that the HBO series would not be a true adaptation, but rather a continuation of the series:
Lindelof also emphasized the fact that Watchmen would not be solely his creation. “What I love most about television is that the finished product is a result not of singular vision, but the collective experience of many brilliant minds… In [the writers room], Hetero White Men like myself are in the minority and as Watchmen is (incorrectly) assumed to be solely our domain, understanding its potential through the perspectives of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community has been as eye-opening as it has been exhilarating.”
The pilot episode will be directed by Nicole Kassell, who also serves as an executive producer for the show. Watchmen will premiere on HBO on Sunday, October 20th at 9pm ET/PT. You can view the new featurette for the series below.