HBO's Watchmen Casts Jeremy Irons As An Older Ozymandias

CBR

HBO's Watchmen Casts Its Ozymandias

By Ian Cardona

Published Nov 8, 2018

It's been confirmed that an actor who was previously cast in HBO's Watchmen television series is in fact playing an older version of Ozymandias.

Adrian Veidt is not done trying to save the world.

For a while now, we've known that HBO was developing an adaption of the fan-favorite Watchmen graphic novel as a television series by The Leftovers co-creator and writer extraordinaire, Damon Lindelof. Ever since its inception, much of the project was marred in secrecy. Actors, like Batman v. Superman's Jeremy Irons, Regina King and Aquaman's Yahya Abdul-Mateen II were cast in the project, but HBO wouldn't confirm who they would be playing.

That is, until now. Slash Film has officially confirmed that Jeremy Irons will indeed be playing an older version of Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, one of the main characters of the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

As HBO's Watchmen television series took shape, fans were wondering whether the show would be an adaptation of the source material, a tangent story, or something else altogether. Recently, we learned that it would actually take place in the Watchmen world fans know, only years after the conclusion of the graphic novel's story in 1985. The announcement that Irons is indeed playing an established character from the comics not only gives us an idea of the timeline at play, but also the confirmation that actual characters from the comics will be involved in the show.

In the Watchmen graphic novel, Ozymandias was a superhero and fellow member of the super-team known as the Watchmen. However, after superheroes were banned by the government, Veidt became a successful businessman, who still sought to save the world. At the end of the story, it was revealed that he was the villain the Watchmen were looking for, and he infamously launched a devastating attack on New York City in the hopes of uniting the world against a common threat.

While Watchmen ended with the world's most powerful countries finding common ground, it was hinted that the truth about Veidt's actions could be made public. Perhaps then will the television series examine what became of the character after his malicious acts, and if he became a hero to the world, or a despised outcast..

Developed by Damon Lindelof, HBO's Watchmen stars Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tom Mison, Adelaide Clemens, Andrew Howard, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Lily Rose Smith, and Adelynn Spoon. The series is expected to premiere on HBO sometime in 2019.