For one week only, you’ll be able to see Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of Watchmen in theaters, provided you live in L.A., New York, Minneapolis, or Dallas (whose D did Minneapolis suck for that? that’s still in Minnesota, right?).
The cut, which will have an additional 25 minutes of footage including the death of a supporting character [Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl], will screen in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Dallas before the movie is released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 21.
The rollout will culminate with a special screening July 25 at Comic-Con that is designed to act as a BD-Live event, a Blu-ray feature that will allow any viewer in North America to watch the movie simultaneously as the audience at Comic-Con, see and hear Snyder comment on the movie, and even ask questions. The screening will then be archived and will be able to be accessed for future viewings. [THR]
Hopefully the extra 25 minutes will be mostly gratuitous, slow-motion violence. I’d be disappointed if it tried to explain some of the random stuff (like the bat-liger cameo) at the end of the film, which I found sort of delightfully inexplicable. I’ve heard the DVD also has a special function where you can make The Comedian murder a pregnant chick whenever things get boring, so that’s nice.
Heavy Metal was a 1981 film founded on the idea that the only thing better than tits is tits, fire, and aliens. Such timeless themes are bound to come back, which is why it had a sequel in 2000, and now there’s a new version in the works. The surprising thing is the amount of talent rumored to be involved. Heavy Metal magazine editor Kevin Eastman recently said in an interview with FilmSchoolRejects…
I’ve got breaking news that David Fincher and James Cameron are going to be Co-Executive Producers on the film. Fincher will direct one. Cameron will direct one. Zack Snyder is going to direct one and Gore Verbinski is going to. [Kung Fu Panda director] Mark Osborne and Jack Black from Tenacious D are going to do a comedy segment for the film. Three other directors have agreed but we haven’t signed them, but they’re equally as jaw-dropping. So we’re on cloud nine to be working with such an amazing amount of talent.”
It just goes to show, everyone will show up when you’ve got chicks sword fighting with their boobs out. It’s something I try to remember every time I throw a house party, bris, or quinceñera.
Here’s a sad story: Watchmen, which may not have been perfect but was still a fine attempt at the rare, ballsy superhero movie, looks like it’s going to be outgrossed by 1997’s Batman & Robin - pretty much the gold standard in horrible horrible filmmaking (see video evidence below).
Seven weeks after its release, Watchmen’s legs have all but buckled. For the weekend just gone, the film brought home $199,114. That makes for a total take of $106,848,750 in America. It’s the 358th most successful film of all time in the US, and in 357th is Batman & Robin.
Overseas, things haven’t been as bright as hoped for either. The current international take for the film currently sits at $74,207,581, for a total worldwide gross of $181,103,123. For the sake of comparison, Batman & Robin drew over $130m overseas, for a total of $238m. We estimated, and we thought conservatively, that Watchmen would get to around $150m in the US, but it seems fairly clear now that it won’t even make it to $110m.
Out of Watchmen’s receipts has to come the exhibitors’ revenues, marketing costs, distribution expenses and such like. And then there’s the film’s budget, with the most conservative suggesting that it cost $120m to bring the film to the screen in the first place.
Off the back of box office returns such as Watchmen’s, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we’re not going to be seeing a mass market R-rated comic book movie for a long time to come. [DenofGeek via fark]
Sad. But maybe the execs will be circumspect, and realize it wasn’t the tone or the rating that was to blame, maybe it was just unrealistic to think a cult graphic novel would compete with a movie about comic-book superheroes that have been around for 50 years. Ha, just kidding. Of course they won’t. They’ll just think “See? I told you we should’ve cast a Black-Eyed Pea.”
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Today is 4/20, meaning probably 40% of the people reading this are super high right now. With that in mind, I give you this video of what 1000 frames per second looks like, courtesy of David Coiffier and the I-Movix SprintCam. All together now: Whooooaaaaaaaa. Personally, I could’ve used more cheerleaders-jumping-up-and-down footage, but if the jello bouncing at the 2:00 mark doesn’t make you demand another b load, I don’t know what will. In related news, Zack Snyder just came. He plans to shoot the birth of his next child with this camera.
[engadget via yesbutnobutyes]
