Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter & Under the Hood offers audiences two essential Watchmen background stories on one disc
Experience the exclusive and dramatic origin stories essential to the Watchmen experience as the
comic-within-the-comic and Night Owl’s autobiography are brought to life as Paramount Home
Entertainment Premiere’s Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter & Under the Hood which arrives on
Blu-ray and DVD on April 23, 2009.
Produced in association with Legendary Pictures, both titles are executive produced by
Watchmen director Zack Snyder, Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin, Deborah Snyder, Thomas Tull and
Wesley Coller.
Tales of the Black Freighter, the story-within-the-story in the acclaimed Watchmen features the
voices of Gerard Butler (300) and Jared Harris (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and is
directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and Mike Smith and written by Alex Tse (Watchmen) and Zack
Snyder. Tales of the Black Freighter is produced by Brian McNulty and Karen Mayeda-Vranek.
Tales of the Black Freighter brings to strikingly animated life the graphic novel’s richly layered storywithin-
a-story. Within the graphic novel, Tales of the Black Freighter, appears as a comic book
read by a young man in New York City while the city is being destroyed. This daring pirate saga
chronicles a sailor’s journey home from being marooned. During his journey, the young seaman is
“forced by the urgency of his mission to shed one inhibition after another” and experience horrible
events along the way. The turbulent events the sailor endures seem to mirror those in the
Watchmen’s world.
Hollis Mason’s tell-all autobiography, Under the Hood, chronicles the events in Hollis Mason’s life
that led to him to become the masked avenger Nite Owl and discusses how the Minutemen were
formed. It features the original Sally Spectre, the Comedian, Moloch the Mystic, along with Hollis
Mason, the original Nite Owl.
Under the Hood is directed by Eric Matthies, written by Hans Rodionoff and produced by Eric
Matthies and Wesley Coller. Stars Carla Gugino, Matt Frewer, Stephen McHattie and Jeffrey Dean
Morgan appear as their characters from the theatrical Watchmen film in this live-action
documentary style special.