Things are getting serious with HBO’s Watchmen: the TV adaptation of the graphic novel series has just had Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross sign up to compose the music.
The duo are of course most famous for their work with American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. But they also have previous experience with soundtracks, having composed the music for films like The Social Network, Gone Girl, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Patriots Day.
Watchmen is still in the early stages of development, but Damon Lindelof is serving as showrunner and The Leftovers‘ Nicole Kassell is directing the pilot episode. Lindelof, Kassell, Tom Spezialy, Stephen Williams and Joseph Iberti are all executive producing.
The cast so far consists of Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr, Andrew Howard, Tom Mison and Frances Fisher.
The Watchmen pilot ought to stay true to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic graphic novel, as Lindelof has been a fan since the 1980s. Speaking to CBR in 2009, he said: “From the flashbacks to the nonlinear storytelling to the deeply flawed heroes, these are all elements that I try to put into everything I write.”
In case you have somehow not read the graphic novel, Watchmen “was a serious-minded deconstruction of superhero comics loosely inspired by characters from the Charlton Comics library, which were owned by DC.
“Set in a universe in which the appearance of costumed heroes in the mid-20th Century had altered the course of history — leading to U.S. victory in Vietnam and a Nixon presidency that stretched into the mid-1980s — Watchmen followed a group of crimefighters investigating the murder of one of their own. In the process, those characters — including Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach — uncover a conspiracy with enormous implications.”
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