Walt Disney Pictures Sees 3-D Potential
Studios See 3-D Potential
By Andy Fixmer
Bloomberg News
4/2/2007
3-D movies are back, and the glasses are cooler.
More than 50 years after Creature From the Black Lagoon became one of the first movies shown in three dimensions, Walt Disney Co. on Friday released Meet the Robinsons, kicking off its plan to make four 3-D films annually. DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. says it will produce 3-D versions of all its films.
The studios are betting that the more-lifelike action made possible by digital technology will lure viewers willing to pay higher prices, and help stem a 12 percent decline in admissions since 2002.
Moviegoers also will don Ray-Ban-like glasses that create more vivid images than the red-and-blue paper specs of the 1950s.
"This to me is the biggest opportunity for the movie business in a long time," Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive officer of DreamWorks, said at a Bank of America conference in New York this week.
Studios plan 3-D versions of 15 films during the next two years, up from a total of 12 since 1980, according to box-office tracker Box Office Mojo LLC.
The studios will spend an extra $15 million on each film to make them work in 3-D. The enhanced graphics, as well as 3-D's resistance to piracy, makes the format attractive and worth the extra cost, studio and theater executives said.
"There is a groundswell" among filmmakers attracted to the creative opportunities, said John Batter, who heads the 3-D initiative at DreamWorks.
The industry needs a lift. U.S. theaters sold 1.45 billion tickets in 2006, down from a record in 2002, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Higher prices helped boost box-office revenue to $9.49 billion, up 5.5 percent from 2005.
Meet the Robinsons will be shown in 3-D on more than 700 screens worldwide, the biggest 3-D release to date, Disney says. (Locally, eight theaters are showing it in 3-D.)
Chuck Viane, president of Disney's Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, would not say how much Disney spent on the film. The company is releasing it on 3,400 U.S. screens in all.
Since 2005, Disney has shown a version of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas each Halloween season with added 3-D effects. The movie, first released in 1993, took in $3.3 million in the U.S. during the Oct. 20-22, 2006, weekend, and will be on 700 screens this year.
