Uh... no.
Here is the latest WSj story on the 3-D Crazy. (Note also that it puts a modest $175,00 price tag on the BofA promo for Monsters vs Aliens... a new fact from real reporters that is unlike to get any play on Drudge or the gossip columnists peddling the lie of some massive deal that undermines the US government.)
Jeffrey Katzenberg has created a remarkable legacy for himself. He has, unlike anyone else other than Lasseter and Pixar, wrestled the legacy of Walt Disney to the ground. He has been a leading figure in building/building two live-action studios, Disney and DreamWorks. And he has done it all as the working stiff and not the self-iconizing charm merchant that others have worked so hard to be.
Does he really want to throw it all away on 3-D?
The thing about 3-D is that it is much better than it was and it is much more widely viable than before with the installation of digital projectors across the globe. However, it is not the savior of the film business. It is not The Next DVD. And as we have seen so far, not only is it an incremental box office winner, but it has a bad tendency to marginalize, by its offering, non-3D offerings of the same product.
If you asked me what the box office savior of The Polar Express was, I would have to say, "3-D." And if you asked me what the box office downfall of Beowulf was, I would have to say, "3-D." Anyone who was anxious to see that film was anxious to see it in 3-D. And there just weren't enough screens.
There is a slightly different, morphed version of the problem with Coraline, which has performed beyond expectations, but lost a great deal of its audience draw when it lost 3-D screens to The Jonas Brothers' 1 day storming of the 3-D box office.
Thing is, Coraline in 2-D looked great and would have been a thrill for the audiences of kids and adults alike out there. Ironically, as the fight over a re-stylized version of The French Connection in Blu-ray rages for cinephiles, the "two versions" of Coraline are running in theaters, quite the different visual experiences... as was the experience on The Polar Express to an even greater extent. The difference was, Polar Express in 2-D kinda sucked... and in 3-D, it was pretty magical.
This brings us to the "won't it be better when every screen can play 3-D?," issue. The answer is "no," and here's why... not every film is better in 3-D, just as every movie experience is not better in IMAX. I have now had a few experiences with IMAX where the experience of the film was worse for the size of IMAX. I still love IMAX and what it does for some films. The issue, again, on a film like Speed Racer, of what the digital car racing looked like on IMAX vs a smaller screen... amazingly different. And I still can't really say which I prefer... because they were so very different. Did I prefer the disconnected pinball feel of the smaller film or the giant grounded cars of the IMAX version? (shrug)
But here is the biggest problem... the more mainstreamed the 3-D experience, the more meaningless it will be as a marketing tool and the less willing people will be to pay increased amounts for it. Of course, there will always be exceptions. But as Warners found out, the audience for Harry Potter didn't change its size significantly because of a 3-D or IMAX section of film.
3-D and IMAX cannibalize "regular" screenings in all but a few cases. Only when a film is having box office problems does the 3-D or IMAX win seem to become a financial boon. And keep this in mind... selling out IMAX theaters of 150 - 250 seats with a limited number of venues is a marketing slight of hand, not a change in the movie business model. If a studio said, "here are the 500 screens - not every screen in the multiplex - that will give away free t-shirts to Big Movie X on opening weekend," those theaters would see a big increase in business. (ironically, this is a stunt that Katzenberg tried on *** Tracy. I still have my shirt, though the theater has been knocked down.) But the surrounding theaters would see a decrease as a result. This is not a complex principle.
There is nothing wrong with 3-D... though the glasses, while better, still aren't great... and every person's eyes are not necessarily able to have the full experience. But as a business model, it is an incremental winner with the really good chance of fading back into fad status.
This is the trouble in Movie Mudville these days. Business is good, even if the studios need to make a dramatic correction in how they are spending to make and market films. But the audience is still there... still hungry... still vulnerable to great marketing. But that is not enough. The industry wants the kind of growth that DVD brought. There are all kinds of great opportunities, from 3-D to self-promoted direct marketed movies over the web and/or DVD and even theatrical to the eventual return of 2nd run and living arthouses by way of digital projection.
But the sad revelation is, There Is No Spoon.
At least, no tablespoon or ladle or forklift. And this is an industry of size queens. Time to get over that and to take the pleasure where it can be gotten and not just where it makes your ego grow… in 3-D… or in IMAX… or in 3-D IMAX with SenseAround. The magic is not in the machines… it’s in the human spirit.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/03/will_they_stop.html