Watchmen trailer begins countdown to the series’ debut on HBO

HBO counts down to the series premiere of Watchmen, coming this fall, with its first trailer.

Game of Thrones may be ending but that multi-award winner’s home turf, the premium channel HBO, is already looking forward to its next big literary adaptation: the much-hyped series based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ subversive graphic novel, Watchmen.

From Lost producer Damon Lindelof, Watchmen is a sequel to the celebrated tome written by Moore and drawn by Gibbons. Its first trailer dropped online yesterday and was posted to the show’s official Twitter page. You can watch below:

Picking up in the present day, Rorschach (vaporized by Dr. Manhattan at the end of the original 12 issues) looks to have inspired a doomsday cult. One among them, possibly their leader, says something more akin to Frank Miller and Dark Knight Returns:

"“We are no one. We are everyone. And we are invisible.”"

In unison, they all chant “tick-tock” throughout while a ticking can also be heard, a reference to the end of the world and total nuclear destruction that goes back to the Cold War and the 1980s — the decade the Watchmen comics were set, in an alternate timeline where Richard Nixon was still POTUS. A bloody Big Ben-like clock was amongst the graphic novel’s more infamous iconography.

We also get a better look at the police in yellow masks first introduced in set photos alongside star Don Johnson. He is believed to play a Tulsa police captain and he may be tasked with hunting down the group in Rorschach masks. Johnson’s own narration over a cop’s funeral and the activities of the masked men, carrying guns and jumping out of a van, hints they are after police.

Others who can be seen include Regina King’s character, someone that may be another costumed hero, the aged Ozymandias played by Jeremy Irons, sitting and meditating, and a figure wearing a shiny silver mask with no face. The nearly minute-and-a-half trailer ends with Johnson jauntily saying he is talking about the end of the world and echoing the “tick-tock” recitation.

Watchmen was given a slightly loose but mostly faithful film adaptation by Zack Snyder in 2009. DC revived the characters for the origin anthology Before Watchmen and expanded the mythos with the saga Doomsday Clock.

Lindelof stated on Instagram a year ago he looks at Moore and Gibbons’ original Watchmen limited series as a sacred text like the Old Testament he doesn’t wish to adapt, just further with more canon.