Like an egg infused with a blue god's atomic power, so too did HBO's groundbreaking limited series Watchmen spring forth from a legendary source: the iconic comic book maxiseries of the same name, from creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, with the former famously opposing any and all attempts at adapting his seminal DC Comics work.
For showrunner Damon Lindelof, whose own seminal work Lost was greatly impacted by his lifelong love of Watchmen, the notion of adapting Moore's comic against the creator's wishes was thin-iced terrain indeed, with all that comes with such territory: the danger of doing it wrong, the danger of doing it at all, and the thrill of the danger itself.
Fresh from receiving 26 Emmy nominations, more than any other program this year, Lindelof breaks down six key aspects of HBO's Watchmen, and how the writers room behind it — made up of Cord Jefferson, Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Christal Henry, Lila Byock, Carly Wray, Claire Kiechel, Nick Cuse, Jeff Jensen, Tom Spezialy and writers' assistant Ryan Lipscom — took one of the comic book medium's most ubiquitous offerings and made it into something wholly its own.
"It was almost like a theological conversation, the way that we were trying to interpret the text," Lindelof tells The Hollywood Reporter about early attempts at adapting the comic book, which he and his assembled writers came to know as "the old testament."
