It's official: HBO has ordered a pilot for the long-awaited Watchmen TV series.
A spokesperson for the network confirmed the commission to TVLine, adding that "back-up scripts" have also been requested so writer Damon Lindelof will be prepared in case there's a full series order.
Former Lost and The Leftovers writer Lindelof tipped that he'd received the greenlight earlier this week by tweeting a photo taken during the first writers' meeting.
HBO originally started developing an adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's groundbreaking graphic novel with filmmaker Zack Snyder, who'd directed the 2008 feature film version.
Snyder ultimately departed the project, allowing Damon Lindelof to slide in once he finished his own HBO supernatural drama series The Leftovers earlier in the year.
Watchmen changed the face of comics when it was first released as a DC Comics miniseries over the course of a year, between 1986 and 1987.
It imagines a dystopian feature where a retired superhero team are hunted down one by one until the paranoid, masked detective Rorschach chooses to hunt down the culprit before he's whacked too.
Moore and Gibbons examined themes of abuse of power through the lens of the superhero genre, originally intending to use characters from Charlton Comics before DC encouraged the duo to create their own heroes.
Watchmen, along with Moore's Batman riff The Killing Joke, remains the gold standard for graphic novels nearly 30 years.
HBO is developing several high-profile projects to prepare for the end of Game of Thrones, including five Thrones spin-offs and a controversial slavery-themed drama from that show's producing duo David Benioff and DB Weiss.
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