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The director's cut of Watchmen will play in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Dallas for one week beginning July 17. Watchmen director Zack Snyder confirmed the limited release schedule yesterday during a press gathering for the upcoming DVD release of the film.

And in an exclusive interview with CHUD, Snyder shared his thoughts on why the film didn't set the box office on fire like other superhero films. "I don't know," he said to the site. "Not to be snobby or anything, but I think the movie doesn't have the kind of... it asks a lot of the viewer. It's not 'entertaining' in the classic sense of the word. That's just a fact. It's not an action film, it's not a comedy. Dramas are not hot right now, and no one wants to see a dramatic superhero movie. It's inherent in the material. I was kind of surprised by how excited everyone was getting at the time of release, because I always knew the movie was particular. I knew there were [only] certain people who would say 'This is awesome.' "

Warner Home Video has announced a July 21, 2009 release for Watchmen on home video. The studio will release two cuts of the film including a two-disc Director's Cut DVD that will include an additional 25 minutes of new material. [Full story]

Chatter on the blogosphere over the reasons why the Watchmen movie isn't fairing better than some had hoped ranges from the film's lengthy running time to its complex multilayered story -- and then there's the possibility that audiences are seeing too much of Dr. Manhattan's you-know-what. You know what I mean. His...y'know.

Someone at Liquid Generation decided to take some inspiration from that section of Watchmen controversy and the recent Minutemen side-scrolling video game and came up with a video showing a mock Dr. Manhattan 8-bit video game using his man-parts to battle evil-doers. Yes, it's another bit of evidence to show that the internet is the highest creation of mankind!

The video isn't safe for work so keep that in mind before deciding whether to watch it.

VFXWorld has now published a two-part examination of how the visual effects of Watchmen were created. If you want to know the who and how behind the film's striking sequences on Mars or Antarctica, or how the Owlship took to the air or Rorschach's ever-changing inkblots flowed across his mask, or the digital magic behind how a 100-foot tall Dr. Manhattan was created, these articles will satisfy your thirst for knowledge and then some. Here's an interesting trivia fact uncovered by the read: of the film's 200 different sets, 50 were needed just for the movie's opening credit sequence alone.

• Part one -- five pages total
• Part two -- six pages total

If you've already seen Watchmen then the film's impressive opening credit sequence may still be rolling around in your head. Designed by yU+Co., and collapsing 40 years of superheroes and their effect on modern history into 3-and-a-half-minutes, you can now watch the sequence again right now. It can be viewed on yU+Co.'s website in a larger viewing size which unfortunately is too big for the dimensions of CA's database pages, which is why we're also including the sequence in a medium-sized player below. Basically we're letting you choose which size you want.

Estimates have arrived for how much Watchmen took in from midnight showings and the news is good. According to Variety the 1,595 early screenings gave the film a $4.6 million head start for its opening weekend box office. By comparison Zack Snyder's previous film, 300, netted $2.5 million from its Thursday advance screenings. Variety also reports that all of the 124 Imax showings were sold out and that some theaters added a second early morning show at 3 AM to meet the demand.

The stats have been compiled and the result is that Watchmen will set at least one record, that for having the most theater screens for an R-rated picture. 3,611 screens will be showing the superhero movie when it opens on Friday and 1,600 of them will be screening Watchmen at special midnight shows late Thursday evening.

The Hollywood Reporter theorizes that Watchmen could stand to break the opening weekend record for 300, Zack Snyder's last picture. That movie was also restricted and took in $71 million on its early March 2007 release date, $28 million alone on its first day out. Watchmen represents 90% of Fandango's early ticket sales and the Imax website apparently crashed four times this week on what is believed to be raised interest from people curious to see the movie in that format. Watchmen will be playing on 128 Imax screens.

Warner Premiere is launching a new version of its debut Watchmen installment on DVD and Blu-ray, March 3. "The Watchmen: Motion Comic" discs contain the 12 episodes that originally rolled out on Web services iTunes, Amazon Video On Demand, Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Store. The DVD and Blu-ray releases will also include $7.50 'movie cash', good towards admission tickets for Warner’s Vancouver-lensed theatrical Watchmen feature opening in three short days.

A new Watchmen viral website has gone live at www.6minutestomidnight.com. Narrated by Rorschach, the masked vigilante asks the viewer to investigate clues by guessing at what forms inkblots shapes take. Each successful guess will uncover information about the movie's main characters.

The big two industry magazines of show business, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, have both published their reviews for Watchmen.

The Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt is the more negative of the two reviews for the superhero flick. "There is something a little lackadaisical here," he writes. "The set pieces are surprisingly flat and the characters have little resonance. Fight scenes don't hold a candle to Asian action. Even the digital effects are ho-hum. Armageddon never looked so cheesy."

However, it also should be noted that Honeycutt's Watchmen review gets several facts incorrect, such as the name of the superhero group. He also expresses confusion as to why the heroes that are wearing costumes that don't have godlike superpowers like Dr. Manhattan are called "superheroes". Quick, someone tell Batman that he's confusing to people when standing beside Superman!

Justin Chang's review for Variety is more positive but still mixed. While dispensing praise for Snyder's faithfulness to the source material and the pic's editing, "...the movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there’s simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated,| writes Chang." As Watchmen lurches toward its apocalyptic (and slightly altered) finale, something happens that didn’t happen in the novel: Wavering between seriousness and camp, and absent the cerebral tone that gave weight to some of the book’s headier ideas, the film seems to yield to the very superhero cliches it purports to subvert."

We've noticed that early reviews for Watchmen have started sprouting on the web like Devin Faraci's review at CHUD and Drew Morton's review at Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope. They're both positive but also contain spoilers.

And before you forget, we'd like to remind you that all registered users of Coming Attractions can post their own review of Watchmen (or any other movie, for that matter) and it will appear in the reviews section of the film's database. Let's hear what you thought of the Dr. Manhattan acid trip.

The latest New Frontiersman viral video is this look back at the year 1983 in the Watchmen universe. See how many similarities between Veidt's VMN and the original look of MTV you can spot in this short. Excuse me, now I need to go make my hair look like the guy from A Flock of Seagulls.

As brought to our attention by Cinematical, director Zack Snyder has just revealed that there will be a director's cut of Watchmen that will get a theatrical release sometime in July. At a taping session for an upcoming Spoilers program to be broadcast on MTV, Snyder said that his cut runs three hours, 10 minutes long and is "considerably more violent than this...and sexier." However, Snyder was quick to add that the director's cut will only get released in Los Angeles and New York if next month's shortened version of the film is warmly received by audiences.

Snyder also revealed more information about what kind of material will be included on the deluxe DVD release of Watchmen scheduled for release in the fall, which you can read on MTV's site.

Devin Faraci @ CHUD must have keen eyesight. While catching an early press screening for Watchmen, Faraci picked out a clever shout out to the fans that had been expecting to see a squid make its appearance during the conclusion of the film. Slight spoilers follow but the do pertain to the film's ending.

Warner Bros. has lifted the embargo on the set visit that online journalists took in October 2007. Find out what the reporters for Chud, JoBlo, Sci Fi Wire, IESB and Superhero Hype thought of the film while it was in production.