Damon Lindelof, frankly, knows how to make a watchable TV series. The co-creator of ‘Lost,’ Lindelof has also had his hand in some high-profile movies as well – particularly his work on the screenplays for ‘Star Trek Into Darkness,’ ‘Prometheus,’ and ‘Tomorrowland‘ all were big-budget releases – but his talents have unarguably shone brightest on the small screen.
Lindelof just wrapped up the season finale of ‘The Leftovers,’ the highly critically-acclaimed HBO series which, much like ‘Lost,’ dealt with some pretty heady plot questions about spirituality and humans’ place in our world. It would seem like a natural fit, then, for Lindelof and HBO to continue their mutually-beneficial partnership; HBO has recently picked up steam on their work to bring classic DC comic book mini-series ‘Watchmen‘ to the airwaves, and Lindelof is a self-professed superfan of the comic itself. So, marriage made in nerd heaven, right?
In a recent interview, Lindelof let the world know, in no uncertain terms, that things aren’t exactly headed where we want them to with this pairing:
“All I can say at this time is, as of right now I haven’t had any meetings at HBO about ‘Watchmen.’ I’ve been very vocal about my love for those 12 issues that eventually became a graphic novel, that they were completely and totally inspiring for all the storytelling that I did subsequently, and that I owe a debt to it. So is that piece of material something that’s really interesting to me? Yes, but I do feel like I have to weigh the balance of ‘Should it exist?’ before I decide to take it on, and I’m sort of in that process now. I hold the source material in such high regard it would literally be the worst feeling in the world to screw it up. So I take it very seriously, there’s a lot of responsibility. All I can say is I’m thinking about Watchmen a lot right now, nothing official.”
Further, Lindelof went on to wax poetic about his ideal scenario for his “next project up,” now that he has brought ‘The Leftovers’ to a close:
“I think that if I were to go into feature territory I’d want to make something much smaller, more scaled in the kind of indie world or the micro-budget Jason Blum world than a big superhero epic or a big sci-fi epic. I don’t really think I’m good at writing those kinds of movies, and I’ve tried. I think the scale basically demands a certain formulaic approach and every time I try to subvert formula, I end up having to embrace it instead and I just don’t think that I’m particularly good at cramming all the ideas and characters I have in my mind onto a canvas as small as a two-hour movie.
So I definitely want to do another television show, I don’t know entirely what that is yet and what I wanna say. I feel like this space that I’ve been exploring in both Lost and The Leftovers, this kind of existential spiritual belief space—at this moment in time I feel like I’ve said everything I have to say about the afterlife (laughs). I’ve looked at it through a couple of different lenses now. There’s other things that I wanna say that will probably touch on the same themes, but I think that the biggest challenge for me at this point is finding the right people to partner with on the next thing, because I really feel like the best way to unlock something new is to find a new partnership. So I’ll be dating for a while and I’ll see where the chemistry is.”
For what it’s worth, the ‘Watchmen’ TV series still hasn’t been officially green-lit by HBO, so for now it appears we are all in a “wait and see” type of scenario to find out where this potential creative marriage might go.
