In our ongoing quest to bring you every single solitary detail of the production of Zack Snyder's upcoming adaptation of The Watchmen until your head falls off, we are pleased to report an interesting development in the filming of the comic book masterpiece -- and one that has repercussions, as amazing as it may seem, to peope other than the hardcore geeks who are even at this moment salivating over the prospect of more Watchmen news.
One of the questions that has long nagged Watchmen fans (other than "will Snyder suddenly become much more talented when he begins work on this film?" and "are they kidding with that cast, or what?") is how the filmmakers can possibly cram the entire story of the comic into a two-hour movie. Alan Moore's Watchmen is one of the most complex comic series in history, full of dense symbolism, intricate reference, and tons of backstory -- much of it vital to the main plot -- told in supplemental materials that appeared in the back pages of the comic. No standard-length feature film could possibly capture all of that intricacy, and without it, many feared that the overall quality of the project would suffer.
Now, in an interesting piece in the New York Times, comes word that Snyder is not making one film, but two, simultaneously: The Watchmen itself, and Tales of the Black Freighter, an animated feature-length adaptation of the metafictional comic-within-a-comic read by a minor character in the Watchmen, which served to both illuminate and amplify some of the themes and symbols of the main story. Tales of the Black Freighter will not be included in the Watchmen movie -- but it will be released, on its own, as a separate DVD, only five days after the film is released in theatres.
As the Times article makes clear, this is the first step in a new strategy by Warner Brothers of producing value-added DVDs designed, in an era of cable television 'video on demand', to boost DVD sales when they're beginning to falter for the first time in their history. Warner has already had considerable success with this tactic in direct-to-video releases set in the DC Animated universe (such as Superman: Doomsday and Justice League: New Frontier), and the company claims this is about much more than just piling on extra junk for completists: it allows Snyder to tell a more complete story than the time limitations of the Watchmen movie will allow, and it allows the company to essentially profit three times off the the DVD market for the movie: first, with this supplemental release, which they anticipate selling in huge numbers on release; second, with the DVD release, months later, of the actual Watchmen movie; and third, with a deluxe package containing both, as well as other supplemental materials (including, it's rumored, a faux-documentary short film of Hollis Mason's Under the Hood -- another book-within-the-book featured in the Watchmen comic that likewise gave vital background information on the characters and their relationships).
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