The anticipation is mounting up, as we inch closer and closer to next year’s much-awaited Watchmen. Not only is it a feature film offering of my most favourite graphic novel, but it is also made by Zack Snyder whom everyone loves for making 300. The movie will pretty much follow 300‘s style, but is a completely different movie in a completely different setting.
In the graphic novel, the main story is interspersed by segments of a comic book read by a street urchin, called “Tales of the Black Freighter”. These are pirate comic books, that tell the tale of a marooned man striving get back to shore to warn his family of the Black Freighter, a ghost pirate ship. The series serves as something of commentary on the events in the actual novel, among several other literary devices.
Hit the jump to find out what Warner plans on doing with it!
Tales of the Black Freighter was originally slated to be a 300-esque animated feature, but has now been confirmed to be an animated release, due to budget reasons. We wonder if the Batman: Gotham Knight was an inspiration. Packaged in a separate DVD, Tales of the Black Freighter will be accompanied by Under the Hood, a documentary-style look at the character histories and biographies.
In the novel, every issue is followed by Under the Hood, which is normally a metafiction look at the world of Watchmen – told through a book, a newspaper article and so on, to acquaint the reader with the complex characters and their histories. I thought the movie would cut out on this (and Tales, to be honest), and so I’m pretty happy that it’s not being ignored.
The DVD will be released almost simultaneously with the theatrical release of Watchmen. This is something of a daunting task for Warner, as one of the reasons they have come up with the DVD plans is their decline in DVD sales. The success of Tales will lead to the success of the actual Watchmen DVD.
According to Snyder, the two DVDs will be eventually followed by an “ultimate” DVD pack, that will essentially be both Tales and Watchmen combined into a mega-movie, to closely imitate the graphic novel. Snyder claims that this pack will really appeal to the “uberfans” on the comic, and I agree whole-heartedly. I’m going to buy it when it’s out!