HBO's Watchmen recruits Jeremy Irons for a lead role in pilot

And now his watch begins. Jeremy Irons, a man familiar with DC Comics adaptations, has been cast in a lead role for HBO's Watchmen pilot from Lost's Damon Lindelof, EW has confirmed.

Lindelof himself celebrated the news Tuesday by recounting the first time he watched Irons in David Cronenberg's 1988 film Dead Ringers. "I was in awe of the raw brilliance of the lead actor… and his brother was just as good as he was!" he wrote in a post on Instagram. "I vowed then and there to one day work with at least one of them. That day is today. Mr. Irons… I am honored. Thanks for taking the watch, man."

Irons, whose casting details are being kept under wraps, was seen recently playing Batman's tech-savvy butler, Alfred Pennyworth, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. He now joins the previously announced Regina King, Tim Blake Nelson, Don Johnson, Louis Gossett Jr., Adelaide Clemens, and Andrew Howard in Watchmen.

The original Watchmen comic, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is set in an alternate future where superheroes are more outlaws than valiant warriors. The story finds the main characters uncovering a vast conspiracy while investigating the murder of a teammate.

HBO's pilot is inspired by this material, though Lindelof clarified in a five-page letter to hesitant fans burned by Zack Snyder's movie iteration, "We have no desire to 'adapt' the twelve issues Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons created thirty years ago." He added, "Those issues are sacred ground and they will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted …they will, however, be remixed."

The new Watchmen will have a "fresh and nasty and electric and absurd" tone, as Lindelof put it, with "unknown" characters, "new faces," and "new masks to cover them."

Deadline Hollywood first reported Irons' casting.