“I don’t want anything to do with you or your show, don’t bother me again.” Alan Moore’s forceful response to Damon Lindelof on the adaptation of ‘Watchmen’ for HBO

At this point in life, it is not surprising in the least that good old Alan Moore unleash your fury every time a studio or creative team dares to adapt one of your works. happened with ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’with ‘V for Vendetta’with the undervalued ‘Watchman’ of Zack Snyder and, how could it be less, it happened with Damon Lindelof’s fantastic miniseries for HBO based on the universe of the same comic.

“Don’t bother me again”

Although a long season has already passed since its premiere, Moore has reopened the box of thunder in an interview with the media GQ in which, among other things, he explained that received a message from Lindelof himself asking for forgiveness and advice at the same time. As expected, things did not go too well.

“[Recibí] an honest letter from the showrunner of the TV adaptation of ‘Watchmen’, which I hadn’t even heard existed at the time. But the letter, I think it started with, ‘Dear Mr. Moore, I’m one of the bastards ripping up Watchmen.’ It wasn’t the best start. He went through what seemed to me like a lot of neurotic ramblings. ‘Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias’? I responded with a very abrupt and probably hostile response, telling him that I thought Warner Bros. knew that neither they nor any of their employees were to contact me again under any circumstances.

I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and in part that was because the film and comics industries seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but would be associated with it. I said, ‘Look, this embarrasses me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your series. Please don’t bother me again.”

Moore, who believes that “he would be the last person I wanted to sit down with to adapt my work” and that, having agreed, “It would have been torture for no very good reason” for Lindelof and his team, it was a reaction to the resounding victory of ‘Watchmen’ at the Emmys -where it scratched 11 awards, including the award for best limited series- questioning the understanding of the source material.

“When I saw the TV industry awards and that ‘Watchmen’ had won, I thought, ‘Oh god, can a good chunk of the public think this is what Watchmen was?’ Do you think it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise that had something to do with white supremacy? Didn’t you get ‘Watchmen?’ ‘Watchmen’ is almost 40 years old and relatively simple compared to a lot of my later work. How likely was it that they’d understood anything since then? It makes me feel less fond of those works. That they mean a little less in my heart.”

Fully understanding Moore’s position —it must not be easy to see how others manipulate one’s own creation—, it is undeniable that, in the case of HBO’s ‘Watchmen’, we are faced with a brilliant expansion of your universe. But good old Alan seems to will never changeAnd I couldn’t be happier about it.