By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders
Tales of the Black Freighter
At about two hours and 40 minutes, the Watchmen film still doesn't have all of Watchmen in it. There will be an extended director's cut, and a further extended version including the animated short Tales of the Black Freighter. The animated short will be available as a standalone DVD weeks after the theatrical release, just to tide you over.
Snyder on Tales of the Black Freighter
"The Black Freighter started off because there was this idea that they were going to do this parallel content, that they were going to release at time of release because it's huge marketing," said director Zack Snyder. "We have this giant marketing machine and Warner Premiere is like, 'Look, it'd be awesome if we can release some supplemental material at time of release because it's great to take advantage of that marketing.' I gotta say, I had slight ulterior motives because I knew there was no way the studio was ever going to fund a Black Freighter movie to be included just for the DVD. It just didn't seem possible. But Warner Premiere of course came to the rescue of that conceptually for me. I don't want to say that it was a subversive act by me or that I did anything with dark motives, although slightly dark because I knew that that was a way for me to cheat them into giving me my Black Freighter movie that I could edit in."
Then Snyder needed a few extra days to shoot live action material to help incorporate Black Freighter into the ultimate extended cut of the film. "Then we got some money from Warner Premiere so I could shoot the ins and outs because we had to add a couple days to the schedule so I could actually get all the Bernies stuff shot so that I would end up with a way to get The Black Freighter into the movie and still have the Bernie story make sense at the end too."
The standalone DVD also has a bonus feature called Under the Hood which is a mockumentary featuring the Watchmen cast in character. "It's cool for me to see actually because being sort of separate from that, we'd be shooting a scene and they'd say, 'Hey, can we have Carla because we're going to do an interview for Under the Hood.' I said okay, I don't know what they're doing. I talked to Eric [Matthies] about it so it wasn't like crazy but it was interesting."
With Snyder's involvement, this release is not just ancillary revenue. It remains in the authentic Watchmen universe. "I did try to work with my partners at the movie studios to create a theatrical version of the movie that was not the hours long, which the director’s cut is three hours and 10 minutes long. The Black Freighter [cut] is three and a half hours long with The Black Freighter cut into it. So I was able to use the DVD to sort of format, they said, 'Look we will finish all the shots for you, we’re not going to chintz you out on the director’s cut.' That kind of relationship I was like, 'Let me get you a cut that works. That fits on Imax.'"
Add to Heffee!
