Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

the nite owl is black
ozymandias is gay
rorschach dies in the first episode

none of the characters are superheroes, it's a workplace comedy set in a watchmaker's workshop

their boss is naked and painted blue but no-one ever comments on it

for good or for ill, watchmen is a considerably better-known place to start from which imo doesn't offer much scope for expansion beyond what's already there

I don't agree with this premise at all

Can u let us know again that iyo lindelof is now one of the infallible greats despite a CV of absolute steaming shite, including spraying his cum over several probably worthwhile besides projects

Heh hostility there for lindelof not you tbh

should have him develop Speed Racer for HBO instead
adapted by blockbuster auteurs less than a decade ago
concerns a super hero without any actual super powers, just a sweet ride and a crazy family
also: chim chim

I get that he has a spotty as hell CV and inspires loathing/suspicion and I get that. I just wish more detractors had actually watched, y'know, his last major project for the company that will be producing this (if it even happens, again, I'm skeptical).

what would you like to see an hbo series do with the characters beyond the original story? moore and gibbons' piece is, to borrow a metaphor from the book itself, like an intricate mechanical watch, with every piece meticulously placed and designed to play a specific part in the overall structure

taking some of those components to, i dunno, make a toy car or whatever just seems pointless to me, but i'm genuinely interested in what you see the potential for this is beyond lindelof having recently hit his stride with the leftovers

if I knew what I wanted out of things I'd be writing TV shows. there's a whole set of movies devoted to giving comics nerds exactly what they want and they're boring as shit to me

also I like the book and all but y'all talk about it like it's some sacred text

tbh i think it's a bit airless and po-faced, and its influence on superhero comics has been largely utterly woeful

however, it is one of the few superhero-adjacent series which tells a complete, satisfying, self-contained story and it does it with a impressive unity of form and purpose

a lot of what works about The Leftovers is that it's *not* very contained, not in any way a "closed loop". it's purposely messy and elliptical, and cares more about theme and tone than anything else. that could be a good starting point for divergence. I think comics fans would probably be happier with someone like Vince Gilligan, a strong stylist with a masterful conception of plot mechanics and momentum - his shows run like, well, clockwork. lindelof seems to have a very different set of interests that runs counter to what you might expect someone taking this on would have and I think that's cool!

a longer adaptation isn't the answer because a big part of what makes the comic special is that the content is inextricably bound up with the form

this is all that needs to be said tbh. I guess it needs to be said repeatedly and loudly though.

I think Mark S has a point about Moore. At this point Watchmen is such trodden-over-territory, I would distrust *anyone* who wanted to adapt it - great book, but it's not a very interesting choice for adaptation, y'know? I'd feel the same about someone who wanted to adapt 100 Yrs of Solitude, or Captain Corelli's Mandolin or whatnot.

fuck this, where is the Camelot 3000 adaptation

would watch

could see the racial and gender stuff providing some good content in current climate

I'm really surprised there's never been a Top 10 series adaptation, "cop show in superhero town" sells itself.

certainly a better, more open-ended premise than Watchmen.

can't imagine Moore being ok with option-ing it though

bizarro once again preemptively voiced my exact response, re: Simon's 'sacred text' post.

My feelings about The Leftovers basically mirror those I might have about an ex-friend who I'm glad to hear is doing well now but who I think I'm going to still keep at arm's length after that thing he did that one time before he cleaned up his act. I'm still paying off the damages and apologizing to the neighbors.

I'm really surprised there's never been a Top 10 series adaptation, "cop show in superhero town" sells itself.

after the stunning non-success of powers I doubt anyone will be in a hurry to adapt it, although I agree it has a lot of potential as a TV show

I'm really surprised there's never been a Top 10 series adaptation, "cop show in superhero town" sells itself.

I'm really surprised there's never been a Top 10 series adaptation, "cop show in superhero town" sells itself.

I've said it before, but Sandman Mystery Theatre would be my number one choice for a comics-to-TV adaptation.

people are mostly mad at Lost because of the last season, two seasons at most, right? cause the only reason people are *still* mad about all that is because there were quite a few good bits before that, which is maybe worth noting. (and, I daresay, some good stuff even amidst the muck.)

It's easy to blame the last season, but the entire series was a con and the last season was just us marks slowly realizing what we'd bought as the con men made their way to the next town.

lol I guess that's one way to watch TV

I've said it before, but /Sandman Mystery Theatre/ would be my number one choice for a comics-to-TV adaptation.

an hbo judge dredd with a game of thrones budget would be mine

I could've rolled with it if they were honest about the shaggy dog nature of the show rather than insisting at every opportunity that they DEFINITELY knew what they were doing, and OH MAN you won't believe how this all ties together, prepare to have your mind BLOWED.

bizarro! Had you not heard? There's a Mega City One show in development, possibly at Netflix, possibly with Karl Urban reprising his role as Dredd! You're welcome.

*choke*

old lunch i love u

okay that could rule (only Netflix's extremely lax quality control has me concerned)

yeah not sure why people would assume this would be bad. the movie wasn't too hot. there is more in the comic than comfortably fits in 2 1/2 hours; the movie was both overstuffed and felt overly long and turgid while still not covering all the ground of the comic. a 10 hour pace would suit this just great.

Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'.

(I mean besides that whole 'making $$$ for a bunch of people excepting the dudes who actually created it' thing.)

enh, i'll throw my hat in the ring and predict this will be bad

I guess I feel slightly more optimistic about this than when it was rumored to be a Zack Snyder project, but it's really just the difference between being anesthetized before having all of your teeth removed vs. having someone smash them out with a length of pipe. The end result is still gonna be sucky and toothless.

mainly i'm just psyched to find out what superheroes would be like if they existed in the real world

makes u think

"Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'."

because the movie was boring and the story could make a good visual experience?

Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'.

if it won't be bad... why not

Obv there should be a moratorium on cape stuff & I won't watch this

"Not so much 'this will be bad' as 'just...why?'."

because the movie was boring and the story could make a good visual experience?

it made a good visual experience in 1986 and still does today tbf

but what if the pictures... moved

Is there something more objectionable about this being adapted than an ordinary novel?

I am interested in the "lindelof is good now" narrative, so many people I trust are raving about the leftovers

tbf i basically took the "lindelof is bad" narrative on faith because afaik I haven't seen anything he's written except for Prometheus (which is v v bad for sure)

yes as bizarro and others have detailed repeatedly

xp

the novel-analogy would have to draw correspondences to a novel about novels, that also takes advantage of the unique physical properties of books and structured, written narratives (first paragraph would have to be identical to the last paragraph etc.)

feel like metafiction has been adapted to other media before

also adaptations have maybe been good without doing the exact same thing the original did

Cloud Atlas (the film) sucked btw

has anyone ever filmed Hopscotch

best ex I can think of is Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch", which is more like a biopic of a specific period in Burroughs life overlaid w fantasy sequences than an adaptation of the book

somewhat similarly: The Orchid Thief -> Adaptation

anyway my main point was that Watchmen is not equivalent to "an ordinary novel" and thus presents a different set of problems re: adaptation (which I, obviously, don't think can be fully overcome)