HBO Reclassifies ‘Watchmen’ as a Limited Series, Including ‘Possible Future Installments’

By Adam B. Vary

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – In the ongoing saga of whether HBO’s “Watchmen” will continue after its initial, acclaimed season late last year, the pay cable network announced on Friday that it is reclassifying the show from a drama series to a limited series, including for “any possible future installments.”

The move aligns ’s awards season campaign for “” with how executive producer and showrunner Damon Lindelof had talked about the show from the start, as a self-contained story with a beginning, middle and end, rather than an ongoing story told over multiple seasons.

But the reclassification also underlines the uncertainty of whether “Watchmen” will return at all, especially given HBO’s equivocating on “possible” new iterations of the show.

When he spoke with Variety the day after the “Watchmen” finale in December, Lindelof kept the door open to the possibility that he could return to the show.

“Right now the space that HBO is in and that I’m in is we’re asking the question, Should there be another season of ‘Watchmen’?” Lindelof said. “And if there should be another season, what would it be? I’m not saying I don’t want to do it, or it shouldn’t exist. I’m just saying, ‘Boy, every idea that I had went into this season of “Watchmen.”‘”

Since that interview, however, sources familiar with Lindelof’s thinking say that while he remains enthusiastic about the idea of HBO continuing “Watchmen” with another showrunner — possibly in the vein of FX’s limited series “Fargo,” with each new season set in the same world, but in a different time period and with a different cast — he is finished with the show himself.

HBO’s full statement on the reclassification is as follows: “We discussed with the producers and felt limited series was the most accurate representation of the show and any possible future installments.”