We’ve been expecting big things from Damon Lindelof’s HBO Watchmen pilot, and it looks like the anticipation might actually pay off: the great Jeremy Irons (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, High Rise, Assassin’s Creed) has been cast in a lead role.
Irons’ character hasn’t been revealed, but he’s believed to be playing the ageing imperial lord of a British manor. He joins a cast already made up of Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr, Adelaide Clemens and Andrew Howard.
Back in January, it was announced that Nicole Kassell (The Leftovers, The Killing, Better Call Saul) will be directing the pilot.
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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