Written by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub

I’m at the press junket for “Watchmen” and I just spoke to director Zack Snyder. I’ll have exact quotes posted in the next few hours, but I wanted to get this up asap.

While the theatrical release of “Watchmen” is about 2 hours 36 minutes, Zack just told me the DVD/Blu-ray will have two versions to appease the fans that wanted more.

There will be a director’s cut on the DVD that will be 3 hours 10 minutes and another cut with “Tales of the Black Freighter” that will be 3 hours 25 minutes!

He also told me what deleted scenes to expect and I’ll have those exact quotes in the next few hours. Look for an update soon.

3UPDATES:

First - Here's exactly what Zack said

Second – Debbie Snyder, Zack’s wife and one of the Producers of “Watchmen”, said the director’s cut DVD should be out around Comic-Con this year and this fall we’ll be getting the Ultimate Edition which will have the Black Freighter stuff. Here are the quotes:

Third - I just

posted 9 movie clips from "Watchmen" so click on the link to check them out!

Collider: What is the final running time on the DVD and what can fans look forward to?

Zack: The final running time without the Black Freighter is 3 hours and 10 minutes.

Collider: When you say the Black Freighter, so you’re going to put in some of the animated bits?

Zack: No. The Black Freighter version of the movie, which we call the final cut or the ultimate cut – it has a marketed name that I don’t know exactly what it is. That version of the movie, because when we were up there we physically shot the in’s and out’s, scenes at the newsstand that go into the movie. There’s like scenes where our characters pass the newsstand and then we pick up action at the newsstand and it gets us into the Black Freighter….with shots that go into it and it comes to life and you follow the Black Freighter story and then come back into the movie. That version of the movie is the director’s cut with the Black Freighter intercut. That version sort of traces the structure of the Black Freighter that's integrated into the comic book… So that version is the 3 hour and 25 minute version. So you have all those in’s and out’s…but the director’s cut includes the Hollis death stuff, that’s just a lot more connective tissue…it’s hard for me to even remember exactly what’s in it. But it’s just a lot more.

Collider: So let me ask you, is there footage that isn’t going in this director’s cut that’s sitting on the sidelines…or is this really everything?

Zack: It’s really pretty much everything. The 3 hour version is pretty much everything. There was very little that we shot that I didn’t like or use.
Here’s what Debbie said:

Collider: What is coming on the DVD? Is there a director’s cut? A separate theatrical cut?

Debbie Snyder: They’re all done because we had to finish them all at the same time. We have the 3 hour director’s cut which will be released at the first release of the DVD…which will probably be around Comic-Con of this year.

Collider: Can I ask you, is there going to be a theatrical cut and a director’s cut on the same DVD or are these separate DVDs?

Debbie: I think on one of them, I don’t know if it’s the Blu-ray, I think it does exist together. But don’t hold me to it. We also did the craziest thing ever called “The In-Movie Experience” for Blu-ray which I’ve never seen before…where Zack actually…it’s like a director’s commentary but it’s him and there are all these boxes and they’ll play the movie and he’ll point to a scene and they’ll deconstruct the scene on all these monitors behind him where you can see the green screen version of it. Or if it’s Dr. Manhattan you can see some great effects. It’s kind of like “Minority Report” as it feels very futuristic. And then there will be, I believe, in the fall the Ultimate Watchmen cut which will have the Black Freighter thread through the film which includes the ins and outs that we shot at the newsstand so that’s pretty fun. And another thing is we finished all the versions and it was an enormous amount of money because of Dr. Manhattan. Because if you think about it, it was an hour difference between the theatrical version, so it’s a lot of visual effects on Dr. Manhattan and we finished it at the same quality so we were really excited that they let us do that.