Post by AQUA JAR!™ on Oct 19, 2022 17:29:56 GMT 1
In a lengthy piece for GQ Magazine, “Watchmen” comic creator Alan Moore has revealed that he has disowned HBO’s Emmy-winning sequel series adaptation of his graphic novel.
Moore, who famously hates basically every adaptation of his work for the screen and never watches them, adds that he told the showrunner never to contact him. He did not cite the showrunner by name, but Damon Lindelof served in that capacity.
Moore says the showrunner sent him a letter during the HBO show’s development and wrote – a letter that began with “Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying ‘Watchmen.'” Moore explains:
“That wasn’t the best opener. It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling. ‘Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias’? I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Bros. were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason.
I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again.'”
The 2019 series, of course, ended up being a hit – winning eleven Emmys, including outstanding limited series, and was a critical smash. Moore says he was baffled by its success:
“When I saw the television industry awards that the ‘Watchmen’ television show had apparently won, I thought, ‘Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think ‘Watchmen’ was?’ They think that it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise that was something to do with white supremacism.
Did they not understand ‘Watchmen’? ‘Watchmen’ was nearly 40 years ago and was relatively simple in comparison with a lot of my later work. What are the chances that they broadly understood anything since? This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart.
He adds he would be “the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work”, and from what he’s heard of them, it “would be enormously punishing”.
Moore, who famously hates basically every adaptation of his work for the screen and never watches them, adds that he told the showrunner never to contact him. He did not cite the showrunner by name, but Damon Lindelof served in that capacity.
Moore says the showrunner sent him a letter during the HBO show’s development and wrote – a letter that began with “Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying ‘Watchmen.'” Moore explains:
“That wasn’t the best opener. It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling. ‘Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias’? I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Bros. were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason.
I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again.'”
The 2019 series, of course, ended up being a hit – winning eleven Emmys, including outstanding limited series, and was a critical smash. Moore says he was baffled by its success:
“When I saw the television industry awards that the ‘Watchmen’ television show had apparently won, I thought, ‘Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think ‘Watchmen’ was?’ They think that it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise that was something to do with white supremacism.
Did they not understand ‘Watchmen’? ‘Watchmen’ was nearly 40 years ago and was relatively simple in comparison with a lot of my later work. What are the chances that they broadly understood anything since? This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart.
He adds he would be “the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work”, and from what he’s heard of them, it “would be enormously punishing”.