HBO Watchmen TV Series: Smart Jean playing Silk Specter, trailer, release date, plot

The adaptation of Watchmen's graphic novel Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons was not quite smiling. But HBO has launched a series of television series that promise to keep the nostalgia of the original while innovating. Full Comic-con trailer brought a truck of vigilantes, in a war with the police of Tulsa. In addition, several characters from the graphic novel are ready to play on TV.

Let's find out what we know about HBO's Watchmen TV series.

Who are the new characters?

Spectrum of silk: Jean Smart (Fargo, Legion) plays Silk Specter, the hero in yellow and black costumes played by Malin Akerman in the film adaptation of Zack Snyder. Showrunner Damon Lindelof is reported to have confirmed the character's identity during the Television Critics Association's 2019 summer press tour. The character of Smart had been named as FBI agent, Laurie Blake (born Juspeczyk), a huge clue that she would wear the hero's mask.

As for the name Blake, this suggests that it is related in a certain way to Edward Blake, aka the comedian, who died during the movie adaptation.

Angela Abar: According to a press release from the HBO channel, King is currently playing in Angela Abar. Abar is the main detective of the Tulsa Police Force and mother of three children. As the full trailer explains, the police must wear masks to protect themselves from the militia, but Abar must also wear a metaphorical mask to look after his children.

It was also badumed that his character fighting the crime was Hooded Justice, a mysterious militant of the illustrated novel, who appears in the trailer, wearing a red cape and a hanged hanging knot.

Ozymandias: Jeremy Irons, who then appears on the prestigious cast list, plays "the aging and imperious lord of a British mansion", better known as Adrian Alexander Veidt / Ozymandias, if the information is accurate. The billionaire genius who led World Peace in Zack Snyder's film adaptation in 2009 may have more big plans for the world (or at least Tulsa, Oklahoma) in television adaptation.

We also know in the last press release that:

• Don Johnson plays Judd Crawford, Tulsa Police Chief
• Tim Blake Nelson plays the detective with the intriguing name Looking Glbad
• Louis Gossett Jr. Will plays Reeves, supposed to be Dr. Manhattan, who appears in the trailer, initially on Mars as shown in the coverage of the news TV, and then apparently on Earth, retrieving his own mask
• Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (recently seen in Black mirror and Aquaman) plays Cal Abar, presumably linked to King's character
• Tom Mison play Mr Phillips
• Frances Fisher plays Jane Crawford
• Sara Vickers play madam crookshanks
• Hong Chau plays Lady Trieu, a mysterious trillionaire

Andrew Howard, Jacob Ming-Trent, Dylan Schombing and James Wolk also have plays.

Comic-con trailer

Just take a look at The mbadive shadow of Marvel, HBO made its mark at San Diego Comic-Con this year. Trailers for Westworld, Its dark materials and guardians all brought hope to Game of Thrones void. (Meanwhile, the Game of Thrones SDCC Board continued to offer premium drama programming.)

Watchmen's latest trailer offers a more in-depth look at the details of the plot, including an explanation of why the world's policemen wear yellow masks – to protect their identity from self-defense attacks . One of the most exciting clips is the shot of a blue hand picking up a blue mask. Dr. Manhattan, who travels in space, is he ready to recover from Mars?

Trailer

Our first glimpse of adaptation in eight episodes of HBO reveals that there is not only one vigilante wearing a Rorschach mask, there is a whole underground community. His speaker, presented at the very beginning of the trailer, said: "We are nobody, we are everyone and we are invisible."

This does not bode well for the fate of this alternate universe, where "hibernating" vigilantes, or superheroes depending on what you look at, seem to trigger an uprising that could lead to a "calculus" and a war with them. Tulsa. Police force. The ominous song of "ticktock, ticktock" certainly sends a thrill.

Setting, plot details

The trailers are waging a war between an uprising of militiamen wearing the Rorschach mask, which would be known as the 7th Calvary, and the Tulsa police, who also wear masks to protect their identity.

The Tulsa scenery in Oklahoma seems to contain Lindelof's adaptation to a slightly smaller scale, although Dr. Manhattan is on Mars. This story unfolds after the events of Snyder's movie, and characters like the comedian risk being dead in the timeline of the TV show. But this does not mean that Lindelof can not yet immerse himself in the group of characters in the graphic novel that has not yet been represented on the screen.

HBO offers a rather general description of the plot that covers Lindelof's intentions to propose a new interpretation of the original story without compromising his bones.

"Based on Alan Moore's graphic novel, Watchmen fits into another story where" superheroes "are treated as outlaws, and while Lindelof (The Leftovers) is considering Embrace the nostalgia of the original novel graphic novel, the series will also try to innovate in itself. "

Lindelof compared his comments to Noah Hawley's television series Fargo, which became "his own business" of the Coen brothers' original 1996 film, he told Syfy in April 2018. "I would call not Fargo's version of Noah Hawley's an adaptation, the film exists inside his world, and so anything that happened in the Fargo movie precedes the Fargo TV show. "

Throughout his journey in 2009, before the release of Snyder's Watchmen, Lindelof told CBR how the film had influenced his writing: "From flashbacks to non-linear narratives to deeply flawed heroes, these are all of the elements that I try to in all that I write. "

So, at the very least, perhaps we can expect these elements of the new series, no doubt refined when Lindelof wrote Lost.

Dave Gibbons, a cartoonist from Watchmen, seems to approve the script. "I found Damon's approach very refreshing, exciting and unexpected," he told Entertainment Weekly in September 2018. "Although it's very respectful and true to the source (eg , the illustrated novel of Watchmen, Alan and myself) ", it is not a retreading of the same soil, it is not a reinterpretation, it is a totally unexpected approach. "

Release date, soundtrack, driver

HBO confirmed Lindelof's "redesign" in October 2019 and, according to IMDb, the first series will consist of eight episodes, one hour each. So there is a lot of time on the screen for the large distribution of characters.

For the uninitiated, HBO is a subscription service offering both cable and streaming with HBO, so you do not even need a TV. Bonus: You can listen to HBO Now for free for 30 days.

As a music fan, note that the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composers from The Social Network are on board.

Nicole Kbadell, a veteran of Westworld's HBO and Lindelof's The Leftovers, leads the pilot. Lindelof congratulated Kbadell for her work and posted it on Instagram in June 2018: "Yesterday she called wrap on the Watchmen pilot … and there is no doubt – she WAS the pilot, driving our owl flawless take-off on landing. "

Hell of development

Like all good superheroes, Watchmen's story has not always been smiling. Zack Snyder 's 2009 film adaptation stems from two decades of hellish development. The director of Twelve Monkeys, Terry Gilliam, flirted with the project before considering the comic (collected in a graphic novel in 1987) "infilmable". Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) and Paul Greengrbad (The Bourne Series) had a great time before Snyder gained momentum in 2005.

His final cut lasted 2 hours and 43 minutes, with an "ultimate cut" at 3 hours and 35 minutes. With an R notation, six main characters and a defined world in an alternative scenario that applies the multiverse theory, the answer has been split. But Snyder can at least pretend to have done him a bad blow.

Now, a decade later, HBO is once again attacking Watchmen, but with a TV series that gives Runon star Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost) enough time to tackle the complicated narrative of comics. That's where he chooses to walk there at all. In a five-page open letter to fans, Lindelof, a long-time fan of the graphic novel, explained his intention not to adapt the "sacred ground" but to: remix he.

He wrote words like "original", "contemporary" and "new faces" but also pointed out that he would "not erase what was before".

This story was published on October 19, 2018.