HBO’s upcoming Watchmen has found a fitting actor to play President Robert Redford – Robert Redford himself! The news broke on Fox News recently that the actor is coming out of retirement just to play this role.
If you’re confused, in HBO’s Watchmen universe, director and actor Robert Redford is actually President of the United States. This is because the series – and its source material – is based in an alternate timeline where history turned out a little differently.
Yet, despite the show being set in an alternate universe, creator Damon Lindelof claims that it will still tackle real-world issues that affect us today.
“When I started to think about what ‘Watchmen’ was going to be, trying to think about it in the original source material, the book was highly political,” he said to USAToday, “What in 2019 is the equivalent of the nuclear standoff between Russia and the U.S.? It felt like it was undeniably race and policing in America.”
Indeed, Alan Moore’s original work (and its movie adaptation directed by Zach Snyder) was heavily political and tackled the Cold War-era tensions between the United States and Russia. By the time of the story’s setting in 1985, the conflict between the two countries verges on World War III in the Watchmen universe.
This time, however, Lindelof chose to tackle a topic that is debated about today to make the series more relevant for modern viewing. Using Alan Moore’s universe as a “jumping-off point”, the show’s creator plans to explore the issues of white supremacy and police brutality while admitting that “there are no grandiose solutions”.
Recently, Watchmen author Alan Moore said that he was “not interested” in the series. In response, Lindelof said that he was “channeling the spirit” of the comic scribe by ignoring his disapproval and doing it anyway.
