It’s been almost a year now since we found out that LOST and The Leftovers co-creator Damon Lindelof was in talks to take on a Watchmen series at HBO, and eight months since Lindelof and his writing team officially got to work on a pilot episode for the potential series. It’s still only just a pilot episode, with word coming earlier this year that Nicole Kassell had been hired to direct the all-important first episode, which will help HBO decide if they want to move forward with a full season.

But now, after 140 days of working on the hopeful show, Lindelof has shared a lengthy letter aimed directly at fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘ graphic novel, who are understandably skeptical of the series based on something they love so dearly and don’t want to see tarnished in any way. In this letter, he makes an intriguing revelation: this potential HBO series is not in fact another adaptation of Moore and Gibbons’ original work, but an original story set in the world they created. See what he had to say below.

Lindelof shared the multi-paged letter on his Instagram account, as both a story of his own love of the original work and a reassurance to other fans who are worried about the possible series living up to massively high expectations:

I’ve read and very much enjoyed Moore and Gibbons’ graphic novel, and yes, I even enjoyed Zack Snyder’s (who was originally considering working on HBO’s series a few years back) movie adaptation almost a decade ago.

Because of that I’m excited to see what Lindelof and his team come up with. If the show doesn’t live up to expectations the original will still be there, and it will always be great.

But HBO shows rarely let me down and if they do decide to move forward with it, I expect it’s going to be something that will be quite difficult to ignore.

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