HBO wants us to watch the Watchmen. News recently broke that the cable network that gave us Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, and Westworld has recruited The Leftovers showrunner, Damon Lindelof, to adapt Watchmen for television. Originally published in 1986 and created by the legendary Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the graphic novel was thought to be "unfilmmable" for decades until director Zack Snyder brought Watchmen to movie screens in 2009. Snyder's film was a divisive piece of cinema with plenty of detractors, but over time it has come to be heralded by many as one of the most visionary comic book movies ever made.

Lindelof, who was one of the primary architects of Lost, is no stranger to creating a divisive work which was adored by legions yet leaves just as many disappointed. Lindelof is evidently a lifelong fan of Moore and Gibbons' seminal graphic novel, as he told CBR, “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.”  As such, Lindelof seems like a natural fit as the next filmmaker to face the challenge of adapting Watchmen.

Snyder's challenge for his cinematic vision was to somehow fit one of the most complex stories ever printed in a graphic novel into a three-hour film (with the director's and ultimate cuts, considered superior by fans, both exceeding that runtime). With an HBO series, Lindelof would have one major advantage to bring to his Watchmen: time. One standard season of 13 episodes gives Lindelof ample latitude to explore Watchmen's many unfolding layers, which depict the actions of multiple characters between the 1940s to 1985 all over the United States, Vietnam, Antarctica, and even Mars. However, HBO likely isn't looking for Watchmen to be a one-off miniseries. With its flagship show, Game of Thrones, eyeing its conclusion, the network is looking for its next big hit to fill the void Thrones leaves behind (at least, until a Game of Thrones spinoff comes to life). If Watchmen proves to be a hit, Lindelof's series must deliver multiple seasons of must-see television.

Snyder's 2009 film, was taken to task for everything from his casting choices, to his trademark use of slow-motion in his ultra-violent action scenes, to altering the graphic novel's ending. And yet, at the same time, Snyder was also condemned for being too slavish to the source material. Lindelof himself said after seeing Snyder's effort, “It’s the most married-to-the-original-text version of Watchmen that could’ve been made," suggesting Lindelof's version of Watchmen may be less "married" to the source material.

On HBO, Lindelof would have the space and, presumably, the creative onus to make a very different version of Watchmen from Snyder's film. Here are some ways Lindelof can deliver a Watchmen series that would be surprising, divergent, and no doubt, controversial:

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Watchmen

Leave the Graphic Novel Behind

By now, fans know the basic story of Watchmen: the 1985 murder of Edward Blake, revealed to be the costumed government operative called the Comedian, triggers an investigation by the masked vigilante known as Rorschach. As Rorschach follows the clues surrounding Blake's murder, he discovers a complex conspiracy surrounding his fellow superheroes, who have all been forced to retire by government mandate. The story then explores the decades-long history of masked adventurers and the dawn of Doctor Manhattan, the first and only superpowered being in this universe, and how their existence altered and upended the world order. Eventually, the trail leads to the discovery of a master plan by Adrian Veidt, formerly the hero known as Ozymandias, to stage an attack on New York City in order to force the governments of the world to pull back from the brink of nuclear Armageddon. At least in a nutshell.

In spite of whatever grievances fans have with Snyder's Watchmen, his film told the story of the graphic novel very well. Lindelof's Watchmen series may be expected to adapt this same story beat-for-beat, but seeing Watchmen's story told again, just a decade removed from the film's theatrical run, would inevitably feel redundant, even if Lindelof's series manages to improve upon aspects of Snyder's work. The investigation by Rorschach that Snyder's film focuses on is just one thread of many complicated themes and explorations of characters and deconstruction of the tropes of comic book superheroes Watchmen is really about.

A lot of the meat on Watchmen's bones is found in the various ancillary material provided by Moore and Gibbons. Each chapter of the graphic novel was book-ended by extras that enriched the Watchmen universe: Pages of Hollis Mason's autobiography "Under the Hood," excepts from interviews conducted with Adrian Veidt, and of course, the pirate graphic novel "Tales of the Black Freighter," which was woven through the text of the graphic novel. Lindelof would have the leeway on HBO to really delve into that material. Departing from the "modern day" of 1985 in the story (or even setting Watchmen in our modern day) and spending ample time exploring the history of the Watchmen universe is something only an HBO series could best accomplish.

Similar to how AMC's Preacher and The Walking Dead unshackled themselves from their source material as they saw fit (as did Game of Thrones in diverging from George R.R. Martin's novels), Lindelof would be best served by letting the 2009 movie be the "slavish" adaptation and using his series to do the unexpected with Watchmen.

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Before Watchmen

Lindelof can also draw material from Before Watchmen, the controversial prequel stories set in the Watchmen universe DC Comics commissioned without Alan Moore's approval. While met with umbrage from many corners of fandom, Before Watchmen was financially successful and top creators like J. Michael Straczynski, Darwyn Cooke, and Amanda Conner brought their A-game to the series, taking up the mission to further explore and shed new light on the various corners of the Watchmen universe.

Before Watchmen's multiple series explored Rorschach's grim life as a vigilante in the 1980s, teamed up Rorschach and the second Nite-Owl in the 1970s, showed us the rebellious teen years of a young Laurie Jupiter trying to escape the domineering control of her mother Sally Jupiter in the 1960's, explored the relationship between the Comedian and the Kennedys (Snyder's film fingered the Comedian as the true assassin of JFK), and brought us into the mindset of Adrian Veidt as he was preparing his ultimate master plan in 1985. Adapting all of these period settings would be a huge challenge in terms of production, but it would make Watchmen unlike anything else currently on television.

In fact, Lindelof's use of flashbacks to illuminate each how each character ended up on the island on Lost is a perfect template for how he could do the same for the Watchmen. Lindelof's series could potentially leave linear storytelling behind in favor of giving each individual Watchmen character dedicated episodes to further delve into their personal histories and motivations that still link back to whatever the main narrative of the season is. There's also nothing stopping Lindelof from eschewing Before Watchmen's stories and crafting his own tales of each character's pasts, which would create further unexpected surprises for the audience.

More Minutemen

Minutemen Watchmen

The history of the first masked adventurers, the Minutemen, not only provides rich context and counterpoint to the 'main' characters like Rorschach, Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias, and Silk Spectre, but they are arguably more interesting than their costumed successors. Using the text of Hollis Mason's "Under the Hood" autobiography as a jumping off point - and perhaps taking some cues from Darwyn Cooke's Before Watchmen: Minutemen miniseries - Lindelof could fully explore how a diverse group of do-gooders in the late 1930s and 1940s came to decide to put on masks and silly costumes and fight crime, and the havoc that ensued on their lives as a result.

Certainly, major events from the Minutemen's history like Edward Blake's attempted rape of Sally Jupiter had a profound effect on their successors, the Watchmen. Lindelof could take the time to really explore the complicated relationship between Blake and Sally Jupiter. What's more, HBO is a venue where Watchmen wouldn't have to shy away from taking a hard look at the secret relationship between Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice, the alcoholism and mental deterioration of Mothman, the murder of Dollar Bill (who was shot to death when he got his cape caught in a revolving door while trying to foil a bank robbery), and the brutal execution of Silhouette and her lesbian lover. Through it all, there was Hollis Mason, the stalwart good soldier who watched it all happen and lived to write a book about it. Snyder's movie could only hint at the sordid and tragic history of the Minutemen, but Lindelof's series can truly do the stories of the Minutemen justice.

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Doctor Manhattan played by Billy Crudup in Zack Snyder's Watchmen

The Shadow of Doctor Manhattan

The most powerful being in Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan also provides Lindelof with his biggest mind-bending storytelling opportunity. Westworld thrilled fans with its exploration of how the Host robots perceive time and their own sentience while programmed to exist in a constant loop, and what happens when they break from that loop. Doctor Manhattan's nearly unlimited powers and his ability to see time in a non-linear fashion could go many steps further. A Watchmen series gives the opportunity for fans to truly see the universe through Doctor Manhattan's eyes.

In Before Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan, writer J. Michael Straczynski used Manhattan's sojourn on Mars as a means to explore his perception of time; Manhattan essentially disassembled time to glean every possible outcome from multiple realities - such as what would have happened if he never returned to get his watch and was never transformed into Doctor Manhattan? How would the world and the people he knows have been changed? Lindelof could utilize Doctor Manhattan as a means to explore several alternate realities or timelines of the events of Watchmen, including a version of the story where Doctor Manhattan never existed - would the events of their world end up resembling what happened in our world (Nixon never served 5 terms as President, for example), or would Watchmen's world even up even worse?

Through Doctor Manhattan, Watchmen can go beyond the earthbound exploits of its other characters and really explore heady science fiction themes, explore physics and metaphysics, outer space, and reality and time itself with a character who can potentially do anything.

To paraphrase Doctor Manhattan, nothing ever ends, and that now includes adapting Watchmen. Those looking for the "purest" Watchmen experience will always have the Moore and Gibbons' graphic novel. For many, that is the only "true" Watchmen story. Plenty of fans are satisfied with Zack Snyder's movie adaptation, and now HBO has given Damon Lindelof license to see what he can do with Watchmen as a series. It will be fascinating to see how he will interpret Watchmen for HBO, what he maintains, and what he will do differently.

NEXT: WATCHMEN GETS AN HONEST TRAILER