It’s been no secret that Zach Snyder wants to stay as faithful to the original material as possible when it comes to Watchmen. He did with 300 and it turned out amazingly.
So, when given the budget to get the story within the story done Zach jumped at the opportunity. The question was would The Tail of the Black Freighter be included in the original theatrical release or in an extended edition on DVD. For those you who haven’t read the graphic novel by Alan Moore The Tail of the Black Freighter is a comic book being read inside the actual comic. It’s dark, gruesome and essentially is the short version of the longer story. Our own Derek would be better suited to describe this as the indisputable comic-book junkie of the site.
Here’s what we know via Rope of Silicon about what to expect. The Tail of the Black Freighter will be an animated feature that heads directly to DVD five days after Watchmen hits the big screen on March 6th, 2009. The DVD will also feature a documentary-style film called “Under the Hood” that looks at some of the characters’ back stories which appear as journal entries in the graphic novel.
Also, on the DVD will be a dozen 22 to 26-minute webisodes which are going to be to assist people understand the complexity of the story. It will be called “The Watchmen Motion Comic”, which is the comic page by page read by a voice actor.
We can expect the theatrical release to appear some time in Q3 next year and then potentially an extended edition ala Lord of the Rings special editions with the “Black Freighter” footage cut in throughout.
I’m anxiously awaiting to see what Zach Snyder does with Watchmen and The Tail of the Black Freighter.
