posted 04-23-2007 01:54 AM                    

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Coming at you: Dueling 3-D films

Fox and DreamWorks fight over a 2009 release date. Theaters are caught in middle.

By Lorenza Muñoz, Times Staff Writer
April 20, 2007 -- Los Angeles Times

Movie theaters typically love having two big-budget movies butting heads on a holiday weekend because that will keep cash registers whirring at cinema complexes.

But an abundance of riches has put theaters in a bind for Memorial Day 2009.

Both 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. have chosen that date to release what each hopes will be its first 3-D blockbuster. DreamWorks' "Monsters vs. Aliens" will be up against a potentially scarier creature: "Avatar," a science-fiction thriller from James Cameron, the director of Hollywood's biggest blockbuster, "Titanic."

The nation's largest exhibitors, however, say they won't have room for both. As many as 5,000 screens are expected to be equipped to show 3-D movies by 2009, up from 700 today. But DreamWorks and Fox each want all of them. DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who has been campaigning to get theater operators to accelerate the conversion to 3-D, has told people that he needs 6,000 screens for "Monsters vs. Aliens."

"I would not want to be put in the position of choosing one over the other," said Mike Campbell, CEO of Regal Entertainment Group, the nation's largest theater chain. "I want both — just not on the same day."

But Campbell is confident that one of the studios will change its date over the next two years. "It's too early in the game to start panicking," he said. "If we are sitting here in March 2009 having this same conversation, I will be much more concerned. I think it will all get worked out."

Movie studios are increasingly planting their flags further ahead in time to secure the most desirable weekends. That's partly because of the high stakes: Production and marketing costs for the average movie now top $100 million. A movie's opening weekend can account for as much as one-fourth of the box-office take domestically. And Memorial Day traditionally kicks off the lucrative summer season.

But a head-to-head battle could leave both movies with fewer box-office receipts.

"These two pictures will have a tremendous demand," said Michael Patrick, chief executive of Carmike Cinemas Inc., who expects each of his 307 theater complexes to have at least two 3-D-capable screens by 2008. "We will want to play three screens of one movie in each complex. If we need to, you could play both of them, but you would never get as large a gross."

Neither DreamWorks nor Fox would comment, but people close to each studio doubt that each would back away from the date anytime soon.

Katzenberg has been trying to convince theater owners that 3-D technology is a way to grow attendance and keep young audiences weaned on video games interested. When he announced in March that DreamWorks movies would be made only in 3-D, he proclaimed that the technology was the "greatest opportunity for movies … to come along in 30 years."

To push his cause, Katzenberg has visited executives of the country's largest movie theater chains, including Regal and Carmike. DreamWorks, however, has yet to release details about "Monsters vs. Aliens" to whet their appetites.

Today's 3-D technology is light-years ahead of the 1950s, when viewers donned green and red glasses. Exhibitors must shell out $30,000 to $50,000 per screen for new equipment such as digital projectors with 3-D capability and special reflective silver screens. Images are crisper and more lifelike.

DreamWorks chose Memorial Day 2009 first, and movie executives said Katzenberg had little incentive to back away from the date because the dueling 3-D movies would keep the pressure on theaters to continue upgrading with new technology.

Yet few in Hollywood would relish going up against Cameron.

His "Titanic" is the highest-grossing picture ever, having brought in $1.9 billion in worldwide ticket sales and 11 Oscars including best picture. In addition, Cameron has carved out an audience because of his reputation as a technology pioneer. Many in the industry expect "Avatar" to break new ground, just as Cameron's 1991 blockbuster, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," set a standard in special effects.

With an initial budget of $195 million, "Avatar" is set in a world where an alien race with its own language and culture battles human beings. For years, Cameron has been working on developing the technology for this feature while filming documentaries such as the 3-D documentary "Ghosts of the Abyss."

Cameron was unavailable for comment.

Some exhibitors are waiting before they make a commitment to see how some 3-D pictures perform, such as Walt Disney Co.'s "Meet the Robinsons" and Paramount Pictures' upcoming "Beowulf." "Meet the Robinsons" has not been a barnburner, grossing $110 million worldwide since its March 30 release.

Industry executives say supply will create demand. "The more content that is produced for this platform, the broader the marketplace is going to get," said Michael V. Lewis, chief executive of Real D, which has equipped the nation's theaters with the technology.

Jon Landau, head of Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, said the movies would be there. "Three-D drives consumers who may not come to the movies normally," he said, noting that "Avatar" also would be released in 2-D. "They suddenly have a reason to go because they can't get it at home."

Most theater owners agree. "We intend to play a very aggressive role in 3-D," said Thomas Stephenson, CEO of theater chain Rave Motion Pictures, which operates 450 screens across the Midwest and Southeast. "It will permeate the whole entertainment environment."

But Regal's Campbell said exhibitors also should proceed with some caution.

"It's a chicken-and-egg situation," he said. "We want to see more product available before we make the [larger] investment in the technology."

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posted 04-23-2007 06:05 AM                    

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Today's 3-D technology is light-years ahead of the 1950s, when viewers donned green and red glasses.

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Once again, the old myth is perpetuated...

posted 04-23-2007 09:50 AM                   

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Exhibitors must shell out $30,000 to $50,000 per screen for new equipment such as digital projectors with 3-D capability and special reflective silver screens. Images are crisper and more lifelike.

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posted 05-22-2007 05:22 PM                    

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May 22, 2007

Top Directors See the Future, and They Say It’s in 3-D

By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, May 21 — If some prominent Hollywood directors and an Irish rock band have their way, moviegoers en masse will soon be heading back to the future, wearing newfangled 3-D glasses.

Last week the next phase in the theatrical viewing experience took a significant leap forward, as Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson signed on to direct and produce for Paramount’s DreamWorks Studios a trilogy of 3-D movies about the intrepid Belgian comic-book hero Tintin. And on Saturday nearly an hour of footage from the 3-D concert film of the Irish rock band U2 made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival.

As “U2 3D” demonstrates, this is definitely not the 3-D of drive-in memories. The concert film gives the audience the palpable experience of being present, as the camera swivels around Bono’s face, then soars over and down among the 60,000 concertgoers. And though the new version still requires audience members to wear glasses, they are not the old red-and-green variety but sleek black ones.

“This is a different experience; it’s much more voyeuristic,” said Jon Landau, the producer of “Avatar,” James Cameron’s ambitious and expensive movie about a battle between humans and aliens, which is currently being shot in 3-D using a combination of computer animation and motion-capture technology. “The screen has always been an emotional barrier for audiences. Good 3-D makes the screen go away. It disappears, and you’re looking at a window into a world.”

That view, however, isn’t completely clear yet. So far digital projection has been installed in only about 2,300 of the 37,000 theaters in the United States, with 3-D projection in just 700 of those. Theater owners have been slow to upgrade to expensive digital projectors, and it is an open question whether many American moviegoers will pay an extra dollar or two for tickets to 3-D films.

The 3-D film first flourished in the early 1950s, when movies like “Bwana Devil,” “House of Wax” and Disney’s “Melody” introduced audiences to the delights and annoyances of donning special glasses. But because of a combination of technological complexities, eye fatigue and a lack of compelling feature-length movies, many of the 3-D films were horror or soft-core pornography, which kept the filmmaking format on the fringes of the mainstream.

The emergence of Imax and the technological advances of the last few years, however, have piqued the interest of Hollywood’s top directors. Mr. Cameron, who made the 3-D Imax documentary “Ghosts of the Abyss” in 2003, is using motion capture technology and computer graphics to create realistic characters and fantasy worlds for “Avatar.”

Twentieth Century Fox will release that film, with an estimated $200 million cost, in 2009, mainly in 3-D. (Mr. Landau said that Mr. Cameron wore 3-D glasses — the latest have plastic rims — to look at his daily footage.)

Audiences, which have had a taste of the future in 3-D versions of children’s fare like “Monster House” and “Chicken Little,” will get another early blast of the experience in Robert Zemeckis’s adventure-drama “Beowulf,” to be released, wherever possible in 3-D, by Paramount and Warner Brothers in November.

And DreamWorks Animation SKG has announced that all of its future movies will be shot in 3-D, for release beginning in 2009.

“I believe that this is the single greatest opportunity for the moviegoing experience since the advent of color,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, said in an e-mail message. “It has been more than 60 years since there has been a significant enhancement or innovation to the moviegoing experience.”

He predicted that starting in 2009, “a significant percentage of the big mainstream films will be made and exhibited in this format.”

The widening embrace of 3-D by Hollywood’s leading directors and major studios comes at a critical moment for the movie industry, which faces expanding competition for leisure time from home theaters, the Internet and games. And it also solves, at least temporarily, the continuing pressures from the thriving trade in bootleg movies. A 3-D film cannot be recorded easily from a movie screen because the images are blurry to the naked eye. And so far there is no way to show a movie in 3-D on DVD.

The push to 3-D may also be the impetus needed to spur movie exhibitors to switch from film projectors to digital ones, say industry executives. A digital projector can cost around $100,000, a sum that has proved prohibitive to many exhibitors. Adding the 3-D component, including the silver coating of the screen, costs about $20,000 more, but the added benefit is immediately visible, said Michael V. Lewis, chairman of Real-D, which dominates the 3-D projection business.

There is already evidence of a box office payoff. “Meet the Robinsons,” an animated Disney film, was released in early April in 3,400 theaters, of which 600 (about 18 percent) were equipped with 3-D. The 3-D theaters brought in 30 percent of the box office revenue from the first weekend, according to Disney. And a 3-D version of “Polar Express” from 2004 has been released three years in a row in Imax theaters around the winter holidays, taking in $65 million.

Greg Foster, the chairman and president of Imax Filmed Entertainment, warned that not all films were suited to the format. “Three-D isn’t a panacea — it isn’t a magic pill,” he said. “It’s a spectacular thing if it fits three specific criteria: Does it take you somewhere? Is it made by a visionary filmmaker? And is the concept behind the film organic to 3-D?”

He added: “If you’re going to do 3-D because you need a gimmick to sell tickets, the audience is too smart for that.”

Among films that have not worked well in 3-D were “Chicken Little” and “Ant Bully,” which were also not successful at the box office.

The new projects aim to be more than mere gimmicks. Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Jackson have been working on the “Adventures of Tintin” project for about a year with Mr. Jackson’s special effects company, Weta Digital.

Part of the decision-making process included a week of motion capture work on the “Avatar” set in the Playa Vista section of Los Angeles last November. That visual information was sent to Weta in New Zealand. There it was married to a computer model of Tintin, the young, red-haired Belgian adventurer of comic-book fame, who is wildly popular in Europe though less so in this country. The results persuaded both directors to push forward with the trilogy.

Mr. Jackson is expected to direct the first film, Mr. Spielberg the second, with the director for the third undecided, according to a DreamWorks spokesman. There is as yet no start date for the first project.

Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Jackson both declined to comment for this article. Stacey Snider, the co-chairwoman of DreamWorks, also declined.

Mr. Jackson’s manager, Ken Kamins, said the director had long been fascinated with 3-D but until now had not been swayed by the ability to create a full-length feature experience. “Based on various tests he’s seen, he believes in the future of 3-D,” he said. “This is really starting to create some interesting imagery that gives the filmmaker a lot more creative license to play with.”

To shoot the U2 concert film, the directors Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington placed about a dozen cameras throughout stadiums during the band’s concert tour in Latin America last year, and shot more than 100 hours of footage. The film, co-owned by the band and 3ality Digital, a 3-D movie production company, does not yet have a distributor, but the partners expect the film to reach theaters in the fall.

Sandy Climan, chief executive of 3ality Digital Holdings, said the improved 3-D format would entice moviegoers eager for something new.

Mr. Katzenberg agreed. He predicted that after 2009, “consumers will own their own 3-D glasses in the same way they have sunglasses for going outside.”

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