Jeremy Irons Reportedly Set To Play Watchmen’s Ozymandias In HBO Series

 

While HBO’s Watchmen is said to be its own thing separate from the celebrated Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comic book, at least one of its characters will reportedly appear on the show: Adrian Veidt — aka, Ozymandias.
Slashfilm claims actor Jeremy Irons — who was part of the initial casting wave earlier this year — will play the principle antagonist from the comic book. In the television series, decades have past since his attempt to manufacture a world-uniting crisis. Decades have also past since his plot was exposed via Rorschach’s journal. Consequently, the 2019 of the Watchmen world will not be the paradise he envisioned, but a reality much more like our own. Well, just with superhero movies positioned as bio-pics like Ray and Bohemian Raphsody instead of blockbuster releases. Presumably, movies inspired by pirate comics will rule the box office. A Black Freighter cinematic universe would be ripe for satirical comments on our universe’s movie-making predilections.
Meanwhile the site also reports Legion‘s Jean Smart will appear as a FBI Agent with the last name of Blake. They suggest she may be playing an older Laurie Juspeczyk, who may be more Comedian than Silk Spectre after 30 years in the post-Manhattan attack world. But as showrunner Damon Lindeloff promised new characters, it is possible she another person fathered by the carousing and violent vigilante.
Watchmen is set to debut in 2019.