Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' groundbreaking comic series Watchmen is set to emerge once more on the pop-culture stage—this time as a live-action series on HBO.

The channel's announcement pegs the series' launch for "2019," with no news of a narrower window nor any hint about how many episodes to expect. It rounds up the series' massive cast, as has been teased in various reports over the past year: heavy-hitters Jeremy Irons and Regina King will headline the series, and the likes of Don Johnson (Miami Vice), Frances Fisher (Unforgiven), and Louis Gossett Jr. (Roots) round out the cast. Those actors' characters have not yet been confirmed.

Today's news is careful to describe the show as "Damon Lindelof's new series," as the co-creator of Lost and The Leftovers has helmed this HBO version since its pilot episode was officially greenlit by HBO last September. Earlier this year, Lindelof posted a five-page essay on how this series will (and won't) stray from the source material:

We have no desire to "adapt" the 12 issues Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons created 30 years ago. Those issues are sacred ground and will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted. They will, however, be remixed. Because the bass lines in those familiar tracks are just too good and we’d be fools not to sample them. Those original twelve issues are our Old Testament. When the New Testament came along, it did not erase what came before it. Creation. The Garden of Eden. Abraham and Isaac. The Flood. It all happened. And so it will be with Watchmen. The Comedian died. Dan and Laurie fell in love. Ozymandias saved the world and Dr. Manhattan left it just after blowing Rorschach to pieces in the bitter cold of Antarctica.

That statement called the original series "canon" and added that this HBO version will not be a "sequel," but rather a "contemporary" take on a new "original story." It includes a promise to speak to modern political times, much in the way Moore and Gibson's Watchmen reacted to worldwide political fallout over the likes of Reagan, Gorbachev, and Thatcher.

Lindelof's essay also included recognition that, by sheer existence, his project "defies" Moore's wishes about Watchmen adaptations , so the writer also tried to explain away his years of reluctance to take on the project. The statement didn't once mention Zack Snyder's live-action Watchmen film from 2009 (nor HBO's brief dalliance with having Snyder try his hand at a TV version years later).