The highly anticipated film adaptation of Watchmen is about to hit theaters on March 6. It's fairly common knowledge in the nerdosphere that the comic within the comic, The Black Freighter, will be released on DVD as a seperate animated companion piece to the film. We expected a super-long director's cut to be on the eventual DVD release of Watchmen. And that it would probably edit The Black Freighter back into the film -- just as it was in the original graphic novel. Well, at a recent screening of the movie, Zack Snyder mentioned that the director's cut may make it to theaters at some point.

“The director’s cut is three hours and 10 minutes and comes out in July,” Snyder revealed, calling his original edit “considerably more violent than this … and sexier” and explaining that if the movie does well, the director’s cut will get a theatrical release in Los Angeles and New York.

Following that, of course, will be the Watchmen DVD in the fall. This will include, what he dubbed, a “Crazy Ultimate Freaky Edition” boasting such time-omitted extras as Tales of the Black Freighter, Hollis Mason’s death, more Manhatten moments on Mars and dialogue-heavy scenes with the newsstand-bonding Bernies.

It seems that Snyder is doing his best to pay fan service to the Watchmen purists. He's doing his best to work around the system and give us the longest, most accurate adaptation possible. My only fear is this: While I love director's cuts and extended versions of films, the combination of everything of this version is said to be three and a half hours. Now, I do own the 4 plus hour extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, but watching that in one sitting is like running a marathon. But who am I kidding? Of course, I'm going to buy it. So will you, right? The discs better have blood-splattered smiley faces on them.

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