HBO's WATCHMEN Casts Jeremy Irons as an Older Ozymandias

He doesn't mind being the smartest man in the world, he just wishes it wasn't this one.

Slashfilm has revealed that the upcoming HBO series based on DC Comics' Watchmen has cast veteran actor Jeremy Irons as an older version of Adrian Veidt, better known to Watchmen fans as the superhero (or supervillain) Ozymandias.

Irons was announced for the Watchmen cast several months ago, when it was revealed he would be playing an "aging and imperious lord of a British manor."  According to a report back in June, Ozymandias is officially declared dead in the show's first episode, so Irons may be playing the role in flashbacks, or those reports of Ozymandias' death have been greatly exaggerated.

Irons, 70, is best known as Alfred Pennyworth in the DC Extended Universe movies Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, as the voice of Scar in Disney's The Lion King, and as Simon Gruber in the action film Die Hard with a Vengeance.  His other films include Red Sparrow, Assassin's Creed, Eragon, Inland Empire, Kingdom of Heaven, The Time Machine (2002), and The Man in the Iron Mask.  Irons' television appearances include episodes of The Borgias, The Simpsons, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Saturday Night Live, and The Civil War.

Created in 1986 by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons as a modified version of Charlton Comics' superhero Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, Ozymandias first appeared in Watchmen #1 as Adrian Veidt, the son of wealthy German-American immigrant parents.  As a child, he received high grades in school, and it was noted that he was very intelligent.  He then hid this information from his elders and peers by deliberately achieving average marks.  After his parents' deaths, he inherited their substantial fortune at age seventeen, but chose to give it all to charity as he wanted to make something of himself on his own.  Veidt embarked on a vision quest, following the route of his childhood idol Alexander the Great.  During an excursion into the Middle East, Veidt consumed a ball of hashish and saw visions of the past.  As he finished his travels in Egypt, he realized that Alexander was a pale imitation of Ramesses II, who became Veidt's new hero.  Returning to the US, he began training himself to achieve peak physical condition, becoming a world-class gymnast in the process.

At age nineteen, Veidt named himself Ozymandias (the Greek name for Ramesses II) and became a costumed vigilante, earning a reputation as "the smartest man on the planet” and using his physical skills to non-violently incapacitate opponents.  He debuted in early 1958 by exposing a drug ring in New York City.  An early attempt at his “bullet catch” trick worked, though it deprived him of the first three fingers of his right hand in the process.  Undeterred, Veidt had his entire hand replaced with a bionic prosthesis.  In 1966, he was invited by former Minuteman and adventurer Captain Metropolis to become a member of the Crimebusters, but the group never came to fruition due to the Comedian breaking up the meeting.  It was at this moment that Veidt began to believe superheroics were not enough to save the world, and began plotting to think of a method that could.

Due to the increasingly negative perceptions of vigilantes by the media, Veidt predicted that the public would turn away from them.  Two years before costumed heroes were banned by the Keene Act, Veidt revealed his secret identity, retired from superheroism and marketed his image.  He became very wealthy and was known as a great humanitarian, and used this to bankroll his secret scheme of creating a catastrophic event to deceive the world into uniting against a common enemy and thus avert nuclear war.  Upon completion of his project, Veidt planned to murder all of his (unwitting) accomplices and arrange the psychological deterioration and self-exile of the presumably invincible Doctor Manhattan.  Fellow vigilante Edward Blake, a.k.a. the Comedian, stumbled upon Veidt's plans.  This led Veidt to personally murder the Comedian at the beginning of Watchmen.

Veidt was first seen when Rorschach visited him to get his opinion on Blake's murder and to warn about a possible serial killer targeting superheroes.  Rorschach was unconvinced of Veidt's theory that Blake was assassinated by a bitter arch-rival.  Veidt was one of the few people attending Blake's funeral, at which he reminisced about the failed Crimebusters meeting.  Later, Veidt narrowly escaped an assassination attempt that left his assistant dead.  The would-be assassin died from an unseen cyanide capsule before Veidt could interrogate him.

Rorschach and Nite Owl deduced that Veidt was behind the whole plot, after they linked one of Veidt's shell companies to a plot to discredit Manhattan.  The duo realized that Veidt exposed Manhattan's former lover, colleagues, and an enemy to radiation and deliberately monitored them for cancer, so Manhattan would flee Earth out of either guilt or public enmity.  When Rorschach and Nite Owl arrived at Veidt's Antarctic retreat, he easily overpowered both of them and explained his plan to save humanity from itself -- teleporting a biologically-engineered, telepathic creature to New York, which would kill millions and convince the world that they were under extraterrestrial attack.  The US and the Soviet Union, on the brink of nuclear confrontation, would then join forces against the supposed alien invaders.  He also admitted to framing Manhattan. killing the Comedian. framing Rorschach for the murder of Moloch, and staging the attempt on his own life, killing his attacker in the process.  When Rorschach and Nite Owl asked him when he planned to execute his scheme, Veidt revealed that it was completed before they arrived, saying, "I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

When Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre confronted Veidt, he attempted to disintegrate Manhattan, but he soon reformed himself.  Silk Spectre attempted to shoot him, but he caught the bullet and knocked her out.  Realizing that exposing Veidt's plan would undo the early stages of world peace, most of the heroes agreed to remain silent on the plot. Rorschach, a moral absolutist, prepared to return to the US and reveal Veidt's plan to the world, but ultimately let Manhattan kill him.  Before Manhattan left Earth to create life in another galaxy, Veidt asked him if he "did the right thing in the end."  Manhattan replied that "nothing ever ends", leaving Veidt in doubt about how long the peace would last.  Unbeknownst to Veidt and the other characters, Rorschach previously mailed a journal to a newspaper detailing his findings about Veidt's plan.  It was left ambiguous whether the newspaper ultimately published its contents.

Irons will be the second actor to portray Ozymandias in live action, after Matthew Goode in the 2009 Watchmen film adaptation by Zack Snyder.

Watchmen is expected to debut on HBO sometime in 2019.