It’s a movie from the comic that was cut due to time restraints. How meta!
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 story-within-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.