Comics die-hards and cinephiles awaiting Zack Snyder's director's cut of Watchmen can exhale. The extended film will hit the big screens in July, Snyder said during a Wednesday press event for the Watchmen DVD and Blu-Ray release, which is scheduled for July 21.
The catch? It screens for one weekend only, at one theater in only four cities: Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis and New York.
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It's a move purely designed for the purists, and could pay off nicely, creating more buzz for the DVD campaign and a July 25 screening of the director's cut at Comic-Con International in San Diego.
Snyder's three-plus-hour version integrates important material left on the cutting room floor, including the murder of Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl, an important event never should have been sliced in the first place.
It also no doubt includes further Watchmen apocrypha that fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal comic have been waiting to see on the big screen since the graphic novel's debut in 1986. Either that, or more questionable musical choices.
Either way, the move could remind viewers lost in a blockbuster summer that the Watchmen film may have been a dark shadow of its lauded pulp predecessor, but it was still one of the best speculative movies released this year.
Between a flailing Terminator Salvation, an underwhelming Wolverine biopic and what looks like it's shaping up to be another forgettable Transformers flick, Watchmen held its own just fine with the best brain-candy of the year so far. Time will probably treat it kinder than most of them.
Disagree? Let us know in the comments section below. (And check out the promo video that shows the kind of Blu-ray bonus materials that will be included in The Dark Knight and Snyder's Watchmen and 300.)
Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
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