By Scott Huver, Special to Hollywood.com
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Thursday, March 05, 2009
The Watchmen Easter eggs are already out of the basket.
The original Watchmen comic book issues famously experimented with unconventional supplemental material in its endpages, departing from its panel-grided narrative to include illustrated text pieces from its rich mythology - excerpts from original Nite-Owl Hollis Mason's autobiography Under the Hood, clippings from the first Silk Spectre's scrapbook, Rorschach's arrest report, marketing memos from Ozymandias' corporation and more.
Originally intended as filler for early issues in the space eventually intended to print reader letters, the supplements created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons proved so popular the trend continued through the original. Pre-dating DVD bonus material, they added to the depth, complexity and real-world feel Watchmen became celebrated for, and now with the feature film version hitting screens, the spirit of those “extras” is being carried forward with a collection of innovative companion DVD/Blu-Rays from Warner Premiere Video. 
Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter
Directly tied to the film is Tales of the Black Freighter, an animated adaptation of Watchmen's comic book-within-a-comic book, a pirate tale (the logic being that in a world with real superheroes, who'd read fantasy fiction about them?) read by a boy at a Manhattan newsstand while pestered by the owner (both are named Bernie) that subtly mirrors the main story, adding subtext and enriching its thematic elements.
Directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and Mike Smith, Black Freighter is scripted by Watchmen co-screenwriter Alex Tse and director Zack Snyder himself, and stars the voices of Synder's 300 star Gerard Butler and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button's Jared Harris.
“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,” Snyder told Hollywood.com. “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 knew that that was a way for me to cheat them into giving me my Black Freighter movie that I could [later] edit in,” Snyder laughed. “Then we got some money from Warner Premiere so I could shoot the [live action] ins and outs…so I could actually get all the Bernies stuff [at the newsstand] shot so that I would end up with a way to get The Black Freighter into the movie and still have the Bernies' story make sense at the end, too.”
Synder said that after the theatrical release of Watchmen and a 20-minutes-longer director's cut DVD in the summer, an “ultimate” version of the film will be released in the fall that integrates the Black Freighter material into the expanded film. “I feel like it does kind of flow and go in and out in kind of a nice way,” he said. “We did these things where when the kid's looking at the comic book, we do these things where we drive into a frame and it starts to animate so there's cool stuff like that.”
Snyder was grateful for the opportunity to eventually assemble as fully realized a vision of the graphic novel as possible. “I think when you're in the movie, we really don't have a lot of time to fuck around,” he said. “You've got to stay on point and you've got to keep going because time is so critical, so it's kind of fun to have the Black Freighter version, where it is pretty luxurious.” KEEP READING: 'Under the Hood'