'Watchmen' Deleted Scene: The Death of Hollis Mason

Not that Watchmen needed to be a minute longer for theatrical purposes, but we knew all along that director Zack Snyder had to excise a few scenes that were in the original cut that he'd put back in for the DVD release. Hey, guess what? The DVD's coming out on July 21st, so now's a good time to show off what we missed in theaters.

Here's the death of Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl. If you've seen the movie, they give you plenty of context at the beginning of the scene, so you can figure out where this scene falls in the story without too much effort. I really admired the way this movie looked, probably above everything else put together, and I'm reminded of what a good job Snyder and his team did in bringing the comic to the screen. It was not a very engaging experience, and the third act was troublesome, but for a long time, this was the movie version we'd hoped for. Check out the deleted scene:

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'Watchmen' on DVD and Blu-ray on July 21st

We finally have a release date and feature details about the Watchmen DVD and Blu-ray. It will be available on July 21st, and the two-disc DVD is $35, while the two-disc Blu-ray is only a dollar more. (I'd skip the standard format one-disc DVD, because it's fairly stripped down.)

The two-disc standard format DVD will include a director's cut with 25 minutes of footage unseen in the film plus the featurette The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics, the My Chemical Romance "Desolation Row" music video, and 30 minutes of video journals, which I presume were the online journals we saw once a month for a year leading up to the film's release. The Blu-ray - for a dollar more, remember - has two more featurettes (Real Super Heroes, Real Vigilantes and Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World), a half-hour of Watchmen focus points, and the Warner Bros. Maximum Movie Mode. Here are two Watchmen home video covers, the one-disc DVD and the two-disc Blu-ray, direct from DVD Active:

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Make Friends with the 'Watchmen' Blu-ray on Facebook

Even though Watchmen was a bit of a head-scratcher for moviegoers unfamiliar with the graphic novel, I think Warner Bros. deserves a ton of credit for letting Zack Snyder make the movie the way he did and for the way it was aggressively and creatively marketed. That trend will continue for the DVD and Blu-ray release.

Warner Bros. has announced the first coordinated Facebook friend networks officially affiliated with a home video release, which will afford fans the opportunity to watch what The Hollywood Reporter calls "interactive community-screening features" of the Watchmen director's cut. It's an extension of existing BD-Live technology, which allows the same kind of thing, but now it can be hooked into your Facebook friends network. The catch? You've got to buy the Blu-ray copy of the film to unlock the goodies. That actually really blows, because what's the point of making something you already own tie into something you already get for free? But I guess if you're really into your Facebook page and really into Watchmen, this is an interesting option.

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'Watchmen' Screenwriter Penning 'Battling Boy'

Watchmen screenwriter Alex Tse will crack open another graphic novel for the Brad Pitt/Plan B production Battling Boy. That comic, written by Paul Pope, was picked up by Plan B before it ever hit the shelves.

Pope is best known for Batman: Year 100, and his new title features a reported 50-page fight scene. I wonder how well that will translate to film. Usually, even great fight scenes get boring after a few minutes. The story centers on the son of a god who at his father's request leaves his mountaintop home to battle beasts in the enormous city of Monstropolis. If you're looking for Battling Boy in stores, First Second will publish it this spring.

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Oregon Man Commits Suicide During 'Watchmen'

There's a sad and disturbing story developing out of Eugene, Oregon that is related to Watchmen. On Sunday night, a 24-year-old man committed suicide about midway through the film. As reported by KMTR.com, audience members reported hearing a "popping" sound in the back row that sounded like a gunshot. A couple of minutes later, the man was found with a gunshot wound to the head. There were only ten people in attendance, and the closest audience member was a couple of rows away from the victim. We could speculate about why he brought a gun to the movie, whether it was that film in particular that had some meaning, and on and on. But the important thing is not Watchmen and whatever significance it may have had or even the issue of metal detectors in public places, which Cinematical mentioned in its coverage of the story. The important thing is that a man in his early 20s didn't think life was worth living anymore. And that's incredibly sad.