HBO Is Developing a V for Vendetta Series – Here’s What That Could Mean

Another iconic dystopia may be headed to prestige television. According to trade reporting, HBO is developing a series based on Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel V for Vendetta. The project is set to be written by Pete Jackson – not to be confused with The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson – with DC Studios’ James Gunn and Peter Safran joining Poison Pen’s Ben Stephenson and Wall to Wall Media’s Leanne Klein as executive producers. Beyond that, details remain tightly sealed: no casting, no director, and no confirmed scope of adaptation have been announced.

The source material still stings

First serialized in the 1980s within the British anthology Warrior, V for Vendetta imagines a fascist state rising in the United Kingdom after catastrophe, consolidating power through surveillance, censorship, and a veneer of moral order. The masked revolutionary known only as V – forever framed by a Guy Fawkes grin – wages an elegantly vicious campaign against the regime, while Evey Hammond, whom V rescues from the secret police, becomes both witness and eventual inheritor of the cause. It’s a story about ideas as much as explosions: the machinery of authoritarianism, the seduction of safety, the potency of symbols, and the uneasy truth that liberation is messy.

Why TV now?

Long-form television is a natural fit for the graphic novel’s architecture. Moore and Lloyd built a lattice of intersecting lives – agents, propagandists, scientists, ordinary people trying to stay invisible – that a series can patiently explore. An HBO production could give room for the novel’s difficult chapters: Larkhill’s experiments, the mechanics of the state’s propaganda organs, and Evey’s transformation from bystander to torchbearer. The medium also invites a visual language that honors David Lloyd’s chiaroscuro shadows without merely reproducing panels.

How this differs from the 2005 film

The Wachowskis’ 2005 feature distilled the saga into a two-hour thriller with Hugo Weaving’s velvet menace and Natalie Portman’s bruised resilience at its core. That film refined the book’s politics, trimmed subplots, and delivered a rousing finale that helped canonize the Guy Fawkes mask as a global protest symbol. It remains beloved, and it will reportedly return to cinemas for an anniversary engagement in 2026 – but a series could restore the novel’s slower moral arguments, its multithreaded cast, and the ambiguity that Moore favors.

Fans are excited… and wary

Even among devotees, anticipation comes braided with apprehension. Some want fidelity to the original arc rather than a loose sequel or a modernized parable that sands off the fascism to chase broader quadrants. Others point to recent adaptations – from triumphs like HBO’s Watchmen to misfires in the broader reboot economy – and ask whether modern Hollywood understands the material it borrows. There’s also the ritual question of authorial blessing: Alan Moore has historically distanced himself from screen versions of his work, and few expect that stance to shift.

Yet skepticism is not a death sentence; it’s a bar to clear. If the series leans into what made the book endure – its unflinching portrait of a state built on fear, its insistence that resistance is a relay rather than a single hero’s arc – the timing could be electrifying. The present moment, saturated with debates over surveillance, culture, disinformation, and the tradeoffs we make in the name of security, makes V feel less like retrofuturism and more like a mirror.

What we know – and what we’ll watch for

• The team: Writer Pete Jackson (again, Pete, not Peter), with executive producers James Gunn, Peter Safran, Ben Stephenson, and Leanne Klein.
• Format & scope: Unannounced. The key creative decision will be whether to adapt the original run comprehensively or remix it.
• Tone: Expectation, and caution, will circle how directly the show confronts fascism, state religion, and propaganda – themes central to the book.
• Casting: No word yet. The 2005 film set a high bar for V’s voice and presence; television will need its own signature rather than imitation.
• Continuity landmines: A mooted TV connection years ago via Pennyworth never materialized. Fresh ground is preferable to contorted tie-ins.

The opportunity

The safest path is also the bravest: adapt the original story with modern craft and historical nerve. Keep the regime systemic, not cartoonish; stage the terror with bureaucratic chill; let Evey’s arc breathe; and treat V less as a superhero than as a catalyst for collective awakening. If HBO chooses that route, the result could be a landmark – not a glossy echo of past success, but a work that converses honestly with the times that made it necessary.

Until the creative choices emerge, one correction is already clear: it’s Pete Jackson writing, not Peter. Consider that a small but telling test – precision matters when you adapt a story about the consequences of getting things wrong.