The Black Frieghter/under the hood deals?

Keep in mind that it is only 20 mins long and is supposedly going to be spliced back into the movie in the ultimate edition later
 
[quote name='pinoy530']Keep in mind that it is only 20 mins long and is supposedly going to be spliced back into the movie in the ultimate edition later[/quote]

Exactly, best deal is to wait until Christmas for the super-dee-duper ultimate edition of Watchmen that's like four hours long and integrates Black Freighter. Not sure if Under the Hood will be on the future Blu releases or not, but by most accounts it's the best part of this set.
 
Just bought it last night.

I watched both The Black Freighter and Under the Hood.

Under the Hood was AWESOME.

I haven't seen the Watchmen movie yet, but I have read the book.

I can see Under the Hood being spliced into the movie, but I don't know about the Black Freighter, it doesn't seem like it would fit.
 
You should wait. I rented and it is pretty cool, but it's a glorified extra features disc. I think the release of it is just Warner Bros recouping the money they invested and lost.
 
[quote name='aboveaveragewes']You should wait. I rented and it is pretty cool, but it's a glorified extra features disc. I think the release of it is just Warner Bros recouping the money they invested and lost.[/QUOTE]

What the fuck are you talking about? Warner bros hasn't lost money Watchmen:lol:

Anyway, yeah, I might wait a bit and see it if it pops up in another weekly, like the marvel animated movies (I still need to pick up a few of those too).
 
Watchmen is still about $50mil shy of it's cost, not to mention advertising and the undisclosed amount of money dished out to Fox. I'll be pleasantly surprised if WB makes money on Watchmen...
 
[quote name='aboveaveragewes']You should wait. I rented and it is pretty cool, but it's a glorified extra features disc. I think the release of it is just Warner Bros recouping the money they invested and lost.[/quote]

While definitely a money grab, I don't think Warner Bros was planning on losing any money on Watchmen when they made the decision to release this.
 
[quote name='honzoh']Watchmen is still about $50mil shy of it's cost, not to mention advertising and the undisclosed amount of money dished out to Fox. I'll be pleasantly surprised if WB makes money on Watchmen...[/quote]

Factor in foreign box office receipts and ticket sales have exceeded the budget. Watchmen will be profitable in the end, just not to the degree Warner Bros was hoping.
 
Cap'n_RDM;5688967 said:
Factor in foreign box office receipts and ticket sales have exceeded the budget. Watchmen will be profitable in the end, just not to the degree Warner Bros was hoping.
Click to expand...

You are also not factoring in the ancillary revenue from t-shirts, posters, action figures, books, not to mention two other blu-ray releases in the motion comic and this tales of the black freighter. What other movie had 2 supplemental video release to coincide? none. Even though the movie may have underpeformed they will still make beacoup dollars. Watchmen fans are fanatics. they will buy these items. and then buy them again. You'll see probaby 5 releases of super limited special collectors edition with more "hrrm" of watchmen before the decade is done. And the budget of the movie was 150 million. It's now made 103 million and will probably finish with 120-130 domestic and 100 foreign. That's 230 million worldwide. not too bad. I'm just glad I got to see the movie. I could care less if they made a dollar. Alan Moore doesn't get a penny and doesn't give a shit and neither do I.
 
Budgets are usually highly overstated because the money just cycles through the production. Cameras are reused for the umpteenth time, studios, trailers, sets, editing equipment etc., that the rent of them gets charged wildly as to show in the sheets that the cost was high. also, a lot of money goes to the executives and producers just sitting there. (in short a lot of the money just goes back to WB)

They always overstate budget and say it out loud since it's now a "draw', people WILL SEE "big-budget" movie titles since they wan't to see what 150$ mil can look like. All a marketing ploy to me. Might have cost near a 100 actual + advertising (i'm sure advertising was the same cost as all the actors salaries combined.)
 
[quote name='vx2']Budgets are usually highly overstated because the money just cycles through the production. Cameras are reused for the umpteenth time, studios, trailers, sets, editing equipment etc., that the rent of them gets charged wildly as to show in the sheets that the cost was high. also, a lot of money goes to the executives and producers just sitting there. (in short a lot of the money just goes back to WB)

They always overstate budget and say it out loud since it's now a "draw', people WILL SEE "big-budget" movie titles since they wan't to see what 150$ mil can look like. All a marketing ploy to me. Might have cost near a 100 actual + advertising (i'm sure advertising was the same cost as all the actors salaries combined.)[/quote]

Not to keep this too far off topic but that is exactly the opposite of what happens. Studios try to conceal and deflate budgets so that movies look more profitable which looks significantly better to investors and boards.

There have been TONS of huge budget movies that have flopped over the years and plenty of low budget movies that have made a lot of money, so I have no idea what you mean about people wanting to see what $150 mil can look like.

Advertising is usually an extra 50-60% of the film budget for a high profile release like Watchmen - so a 200million movie spends around 100million more on advertising.

Also everyone needs to keep in mind that the box office take is not how much money a movie makes. Theaters generally keep about half of that money so a movie needs to make more than double the budget (+ the ad budget) to even come close to breaking even. It's an incredibly small percentage of movies that actually turn a profit during the theatrical run which is why studios are so concerned about the decline in DVD sales over the past 2 years.

Watchmen supposedly cost $120 million to make, plus about $70 million in advertising (source: deadlinehollywooddaily). It has made $163 million through this weekend worldwide which is an atrocious return. Not a good sign when a movie opens comfortable over $55 million and doesn't break $100 million domestic until it's 21st day in release (it dropped nearly 68% from the 1st weekend to the 2nd which is horrid). This bodes very poorly for DVD/Blu-Ray sales because it means the word of mouth is atrocious and pre-existing audience did all their business up front and aren't returning for a second viewing.

Please note I'm not making a qualitative judgment on the movie now, I'm just saying it was a huge financial disappointment for Warner Bros. I'm actually rather excited to see what Snyder does with the full-length nearly four hour cut on Blu-Ray. Black Frieghter/Under the Hood is a giant waste of money, however, and I regret buying it.
 
I rented the disc, and I agree that "Under the Hood" was great. It's about 32 mins long. Definitely the better of the two features. I expected it to be just thrown together, but in fact it's actually quite well produced. It's much better than you're typical DVD documentaries. If you've read the book, you'll love it. If not, some of the stuff might fly over your head.

"The Black Freighter" is okay. If you've read the book, it's pretty much what you'd expect. Nothing spectacular, but the animation is quite nice looking. It's only a brisk 20 mins. It kind of fleshes out some of the details that are left out of the book. When I read the book, I always sped through those parts, because I found the Freighter sub-story kind of boring.

I read that these two features were originally going to be edited into the main movie, however, after watching, I can't imagine how that would be possible. At first I thought Snyder left them out for time constraint reasons, however, it would be really difficult to fit them in the movie. I think they stand alone just fine. I can see them included them on a final Watchmen ultimate edition disc, but I don't he'll ever edit them into the movie.

One more thing... Even thought I liked both features on this disc, I would not recommend buying it right now, mostly because it's only about 50 mins long, yet they are charging full price for the disc. $20 for the dvd and $25 for the blu is ridiculous.
 
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Glad to hear about the quality of "Under the Hood." Watchmen is my favorite graphical novel, so I know I will enjoy this greatly once I get around to seeing it.
 
[quote name='BWOzar']
Please note I'm not making a qualitative judgment on the movie now, I'm just saying it was a huge financial disappointment for Warner Bros. I'm actually rather excited to see what Snyder does with the full-length nearly four hour cut on Blu-Ray. Black Frieghter/Under the Hood is a giant waste of money, however, and I regret buying it.[/quote]

Solid post. Good overview of the market.

I'll make some qualitative judgements here:
1) Near perfect mimicry of the comic, but that doesn't mean it's a good film. There literally was no artistic merit in recreating the graphic novel in film form. No different than grabbing action figures, a camcorder, your twelve year old son, and recreating Hulk vs Wolverine.
2) The Black Freighter segments in my opinion were the worst sections of the novel. They provided nothing towards the overall piece except to contribute towards the tone. To me, I saw these comic/videobook/whatever you call them, on the shelf in Target and I thought "product cash-in".
 
In reply to the original post, it looks like you can get "Tales of the Black Freighter" direct from the WBShop here. The price -- as I write this -- is $23.96 before shipping (and possible taxes).

You should be able to use the code GAME25 to take off an additional 25%. More info on that here.
 
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