Damon Lindelof is very familiar with fan outrage, having written scripts for properties like Star Trek, the Alien franchise with Prometheus, and the confounding cultural sensation that was Lost. He’s such a flame for the moths of stan anger that he even deleted his Twitter account in 2013. But he still has Instagram, and today he posted a very long entreaty to fans of the iconic graphic novel Watchmen, pleading with them to be open-minded about his forthcoming HBO series adaptation. In the sweeping, five-page apologia that looked like screen grabs of a Word doc, Lindelof provided an overview of his life story as it relates to Watchmen; the acknowledgment that original writer Alan Moore provided absolutely no blessing for his work, even calling his attempt “unethicalâ€; the meaning of the word fan; a lengthy comparison that equates adapting Watchmen with adding books to the Bible, and even more.
Lindelof further says that his adaptation will be a “remixed†version of the source material instead of “retread†or “recreated†or “reproduced†or “rebooted†(all of which are kind of versions of a remix), and says, “In the tradition of the work that inspired it, this new story must be original. It has to vibrate with the seismic unpredictability of its own tectonic plates. It must ask new questions and explore the world through a fresh lens. More importantly, it must be contemporary.†There’s a lot to take in, and you can read it all in Lindelof’s Instagram below.