“There’s an alternate world we can only imagine”
Alan Moore has revealed that David Bowie asked to play the role of Rorschach in a Watchmen adaptation, according to a new interview.
Moore – who co-created the Watchmen comic with artist Dave Gibbons – revealed on the BBC interview series Paperback Writers: Graphic Content this week that when director Terry Gilliam was planning to make a film version of the comic, he told Moore Bowie asked to play the role of Rorschach.
“I did hear that when Terry Gilliam was supposed to be doing Watchmen back in the 1980s,” he said. “I remember he told me that he’d had a number of phone calls from David Bowie asking to play the Rorschach character.”
David Bowie
The part was eventually played by Jackie Earle Haley in Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation. While Bowie didn’t make an appearance in the film, J.R. Killigrew played the iconic artist in a scene.
“There’s an alternate world we can only imagine,” Moore said in the interview. A new Watchmen TV series premieres on HBO on October 20.
Last month it was announced that a new David Bowie box set called ‘David Bowie Conversation Piece’ will be released later this year. The upcoming package will track the late star’s development through 1968 and 1969, bringing together home demos, BBC radio sessions, studio recordings with John “Hutch” Hutchinson, and tracks from experimental music and mime group Feathers.
‘David Bowie Conversation Piece’ will also feature 12 previously unreleased tracks and demos from that era alongside a new mix of the ‘David Bowie (aka Space Oddity)’ album by long-time Bowie producer and collaborator Tony Visconti.
