In a rare interview with GQ, Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore gave insight on his rocky relationship with HBO’s Watchmen showrunner, Damon Lindelof. 

Notorious for his private nature, Moore has always had a distaste for adaptations of his work, and HBO’s Watchmen series is no different. He opened up about his interactions with Lindelof, claiming the producer sent him a self-deprecating letter in an attempt to establish a connection. The letter allegedly opened with, “Dear Mr Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen,” which Moore claimed “wasn’t the best opener.”

He spoke further on the letter, saying, “It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling…I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Bros. were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason.” 

“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,” Moore continued. “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.’”

The series has gone on to win awards, which seemed to worsen Moore’s views on it. “When I saw the television industry awards the [show] had apparently won, I thought, ‘Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think Watchmen was,’” he said. “They think it was a dark, gritty, dystopian superhero franchise…This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart.”

Moore is yet to watch any adaptation of Watchmen or his other works, and has said, “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.” 

Despite Moore’s distaste of the show, Watchmen has won 11 Emmy Awards and boasts almost overwhelmingly positive reviews from fans and critics alike. 

For more, alternate endings for Halloween Kills have been revealed by the director.