Watchmen series given the go-ahead by HBO; will be helmed by The Leftovers screenwriter

HBO has confirmed a pilot for Watchmen (a new drama series) and it will be helmed by the creator of The Leftovers — Damon Lindelof. There will also reportedly be additional back-up scripts for the series, according to a Variety report. The news of the pilot and the provision of additional scripts was confirmed by HBO on Wednesday, a day after Lindelof took to Instagram to tease the audience with a post in the writer’s room showing that work on Watchmen had begun.Watchmen is a property of DC Comics — a landmark miniseries with the same name, created by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore. The series was then collected as a graphic novel, and its considered as a detailed deconstruction of superhero comics, having been loosely inspired by characters from Charlton Comics library, also owned by DC. Watchmen is based around a group of crime-fighters that are on a quest to investigate the murder of someone from their own group. It has characters such as Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan around whom the story develops and unfurls. This news comes as a pleasant surprise to fans of Watchmen, as HBO had reportedly tried to develop the series once before, way back in 2014, however that effort was abandoned and the idea was dropped. The show’s creator, Lindelof, is famous for his show The Leftovers which ran for three seasons on HBO, and he will reportedly start from a clean slate in his rendition of Watchmen. Watchmen is produced by Warner Bros. Television, with whom Lindelof already has a pre-existing overall deal.