The New York Times have been informed that the animated Tales of the Black Freighter segment from the upcoming Zack Snyder directed Watchmen will indeed be going straight to DVD but we won’t actually have to wait the usual 3-4 months to see it.

The DVD will be hitting stores just FIVE DAYS after the theatrical release of the film in March next year. A documentary style film titled Under the Hood which delves into the various characters backstories will also be on the disc.

The move comes in a bid to try and improve the market of DVD after a crashing decline in sales over the past few years and of course to squeeze as much money out of fans as possible before later editions of the film are released.

In addition, the studio plans a dozen 22- to 26-minute Webisodes to help make the complex story easier for the uninitiated to digest. Called “The Watchmen Motion Comic,” it will be a panel-by-panel slide show of the graphic novel narrated by an actor. Those together might get a DVD release as well in the future.

The segment is an important part of the original graphic novel (if not plot wise but in getting over Alan Moore’s message) but was always going to be a vulnerable segment to be cut from the film. It tells the story a castaway pirate (to be voiced by Gerard Butler) who battles mental and physical deterioration to get home to warn his family about an impending attack from a mysterious ghost Black Freighter ship.

Kudos to Zack Snyder for actually wanting to direct the segment for the fans but I could easily have waited until it became part of an extended DVD in the late Summer of next year than paying my money to buy it multiple times.

source – coming soon