Posted in: Comics, HBO, Max, Movies, TV, Warner Bros | Tagged: Alan Moore, HBO, max, v for vendetta, Watchmen, zack snyder
Alan Moore to DC: Send Watchmen, Other TV/Film Royalty Checks to BLM
In an interview with The Telegraph, Alan Moore revealed that he asked DC Comics to send future TV and film royalties to Black Lives Matter.
In case you're one of the few remaining people left on this planet who doesn't know it yet, writer Alan Moore is not a big fan of television & film adaptations of his work. Like… not at all. He's been on the record making it pretty clear for decades. And yet, he still gets asked about them, so Moore feels obliged to respond. And that's exactly what he did during a recent interview with The Telegraph – and spoiler? His views still haven't changed. But what we did learn is what Moore has asked Warner Bros. Discovery-owned DC Comics to do with his television & film royalty checks now that he's no longer accepting them. "I don't really feel, with the recent films, that they have stood by what I assumed were their original principles. So I asked for DC Comics to send all of the money from any future TV series or films to Black Lives Matter." That includes monies from projects like HBO & Damon Lindelof's pseudo-sequel spinoff/remix of Moore, artist Dave Gibbons & colorist John Higgins' comic book classic Watchmen, the Natalie Portman & Hugo Weaving-starring V for Vendetta, and others.
Alan Moore Shares His Thoughts on HBO's Watchmen
During an interview with GQ from 2022, Alan Moore shared some "backstory" on his initial (and brief) interactions with Lindelof before the latter began work on HBO's remix/pseudo-sequel. Here's a look at some of what Moore had to share:
Moore on Not Watching Adaptations of His Works: "I would be the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work. From what I've heard of them, it would be enormously punishing. It would be torturous and for no very good reason."
Moore on His Very Brief Correspondence with Damon Lindelof: "There was an incident—probably a concluding incident, for me. I received a bulky parcel through Federal Express that arrived here in my sedate little living room. It turned out to contain a powder blue barbecue apron with a hydrogen symbol on the front. But the letter, I think it opened with, 'Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen.' That wasn't the best opener. It went on through a lot of what seemed to me to be neurotic rambling. 'Can you at least tell us how to pronounce 'Ozymandias'?' I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I'd thought that Warner Brothers were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn't contact me again for any reason," Moore recounted, adding, "I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, 'Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don't want anything to do with you or your show. Please don't bother me again.'"
Moore of Seeing HBO's "Watchmen" Be Celebrated: "When I saw the television industry awards that the 'Watchmen' television show had apparently won, I thought, 'Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think 'Watchmen' was?' They think that it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise that was something to do with white supremacism. Did they not understand 'Watchmen'?"
Moore on Not Having Hope About Adaptations of His Other Works, Too: "'Watchmen' was nearly 40 years ago and was relatively simple in comparison with a lot of my later work. What are the chances that they broadly understood anything since? This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart."