Watchmen Gets Series Order at HBO

Watchmen will be getting the premium cable treatment in 2019.

In the least unsurprising news in some time, HBO has handed a series order out to Watchmen. Lost Executive Producer Damon Lindelof will spearhead the project which boasts a cast that includes big names.

Regina King Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Adelaide Clemens, Andrew Howard, Tom Mison, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Lily Rose Smith and Adelynn Spoon are all slated to appear.

Watchmen is set in an alternate reality in which superheroes are treated as the villains. This is not the first stab at a live-action project set in the Watchmen universe.

A movie based on the comic book series was released in 2009, but it received a polarizing reception from both critics and viewers and failed to make a splash at the box office.

It remains to be seen whether the TV adaptation will benefit from being told over a longer arc. However, given the sheer scale of both the cast and the world, it does seem like the best foot forward.

There's no other network we could imagine doing the show justice. The reason for that is that HBO series generally have high production values.

The series order was hinted at just a few weeks ago at HBO's appearance at the Television Critics Association.

“I have very, very high hopes,” HBO boss, Casey Bloys said of the pilot.

“They did a great job. Damon wrote a phenomenal script, and Nikki Kassell did an amazing job shooting the show. I think we see it in a few weeks. So, we’ll see.”

Watchmen will debut on HBO in 2019 and joins a slate of originals that includes Big Little Lies, True Detective, Game of Thrones, and Insecure.