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For movie studios, it's simple math. For exhibitors — the owners of movie theaters — it's more complicated, because they have to pay to convert their projection systems from 2-D to 3-D. (Eighty years ago, when talking pictures became the standard, studios owned most of the theaters in the U.S.; they put up the conversion money, then got the revenue from the new films they produced and exhibited.) Exhibitors want in on the 3-D bonanza, so they're spending now to reap cash later. In early March, Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, a company owned by the two largest theater chains, Cinemark and AMC, announced it had raised $660 million to finance the conversion of 14,000 North American movie screens to the digital format, including 3-D. The number of converted screens should be up to 5,000 by year's end.
3-D: The Final Destination
Soon there'll be enough screens for all the 3-D movies. But will there be enough 3-D movies to fill those screens? Consider that last year, eight new films were released in the format: Avatar, Disney's A Christmas Carol, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Coraline, The Final Destination, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, Monsters vs Aliens and Up (plus 3-D transfers of the old hits Toy Story and Toy Story 2). Of the eight, half were animated features, one was a concert film, one the extension of a horror-movie franchise and the last two, Avatar and A Christmas Carol, live-action pictures in "performance capture" technology.
This year — unless we missed something or there are more conversions in the immediate works — the number of new 3-D movies should be 19. Ten of these are animated features (beginning with Dragon and ending in December with Yogi Bear); four are extensions of B-movie franchises (Step Up 3D, Piranha 3-D, Jackass 3D and Saw VII); one is another concert film (Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D.) Two Disney films, Alice in Wonderland and Tron Legacy, are a mix of live action and digital fantasy. That leaves just two live-action movies — the Warner Bros. adventures Clash of the Titans and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I — that might have been released in the traditional format but are instead going out in 3-D. There looks to be no congestion of screens for the rest of the year as there is this week.
Warner Bros. has announced that all its epics and big action films — the final Harry Potter episode, the next Batman — will be made, or at least released, in 3-D. Sony's decision to go with a new creative team for the next Spider-Man sequel is said to be related to the studio's wish to have the Marvel hero do his cavorting in 3-D. Spielberg is in postproduction on his 3-D Tintin movie. Will other moguls dare make the next film in the Transformers or James Bond franchise in a flat-screen version? It's more likely that producers, seeing the stratospheric grosses for Avatar and Alice and the quadrupling of screens able to show films in any format, will go where the money is.
Industry Cassandras will point out that 3-D came on big in the early '50s and went away quicker. Audiences could decide that this too is a fad and tire of paying an extra four bucks to see the same movie but with goggles. Many movies are in no desperate need for 3-D: not The Hangover, The Hurt Locker or The Blind Side.
One thing seems clear, though: 3-D or not 3-D is no longer the question. For blockbuster movies, and the studios that make them, it's the answer.
— Reported by Steven James Snyder