HBO Announces Watchmen Pilot Cast

 

HBO’s Watchmen begins to take shape as the first castmembers have been revealed.
According to Variety, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Adelaide Clemens, and Andrew Howard are set to star in the HBO pilot based on the masterwork by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins. Their roles are unknown, but in a letter executive producer Damon Lindelof released to fans yesterday on his Instagram account, the potential series will feature “new faces” and “new masks” as it strives to tell an original story in the Watchmen world devised by Moore, Gibbons and Higgins.
King, who also appeared in Lindelof’s The Leftovers, will reportedly lead the series.
In the letter, Lindelof said the series will be a contemporary story, with current presidents and prime ministers taking the place of the comic book’s Richard Nixon; himself a proxy for then-president Ronald Regan. It will also confront issues facing women, people of color and the LGBTQ community should the pilot go to series.
The original 12-issue maxiseries was a landmark in comic book literature as Moore and his collaborators found new literary heights within the superhero genre. It began a wave of more mature comics and a lot of “grimdark” imitators. Many attempts to adapt the series into a film floundered over the years before finally becoming a 2009 film from director Zack Snyder. Many still debate the creative success of Snyder’s work; which was still the best possible Watchmen movie Hollywood could make.
It is unclear how quickly the pilot will be shoot or when we’ll know if HBO decides to pick up the series, but after reading Lindelof’s letter, it has become one of the more intriguing comic book television projects in development.