Hey Jeffrey Katzenburg! No One Gives a Shit about 3D!
Katzenburg's ego goes 3D!
Poor old Jeffrey Katzenburg over there at DreamWorks. The poor fella has a whole slew of 3D movies set to come out soon and there aren’t enough theaters for him to show them in… at least by his count. Here’s the deal as I see it.
Studios have turned to the gimmick of 3D movies to try and get folks into the theaters. You see, they aren’t making good enough films so they need to find another way to get you to spend $100 to take the family out for stale popcorn, bathtub sized Cokes and two hours of mediocre filmmaking. The strange thing is that DreamWorks exec Jeffrey Katzenburg feels that theater owners should just jump through hoops to make him happy. What a life that must be, “Hey, I just made this whatchamacallit and I want you to change your business so you can show it. Scratch that… I demand you change it and if you don’t I am going to cry about it in the pages of Variety!”
Nice. Is that job available on Monster?
Katzenburg is quoted in Variety saying:
In the last 30 days, things have not progressed as well as I had hoped, expected and, quite frankly, been committed to, by all the parties involved,” Katzenberg said in response to an analyst’s question. “It’s ongoing as we speak literally now, but in terms of getting the big three (exhibitors: Regal, Cinemark and AMC) on board and actively moving forward, I feel as though things have dragged along, and it’s been pretty disappointing.”
I don’t know what his rush is. Do you ever hear anyone say, “I hear they are gonna make more movies in 3D! Those are so great. Did you hear about Monsters vs. Aliens?” Nope, you haven’t heard anyone say that. I would also wager to guess that you haven’t even discussed New Line’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, a title that I recently received an email about telling me that the “3D” that used to be at the end of the title has been removed because it is also going to be available on 2D screens. Tip for New Line: No one cares.
Of course this year isn’t the year of the 3D takeover. Next year is when we get DreamWorks’ Monsters vs. Aliens, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Pixar’s Up, Disney’s A Christmas Carol in freaky Zemeckis mo-cap animation and the only 3D film anyone will really care about, James Cameron’s Avatar in December. The kicker being, of course, Avatar isn’t even a DreamWorks release!
As of right now there are 1,000 theaters equipped with the technology to show these films. The goal is to have 5,000 and according to Katzenburg, “If these guys don’t get their act together very quickly in the next 30 days, they’re not going to be able to achieve that goal… Every week that goes by, it’ll be several hundred less screens that manage to be rolled out in the time frame.”
If you are wondering why 5,000 and not just 3,500 or so, it’s because sooner or later these bad boys are going to run right into one another. Disney’s A Christmas Carol is set to release on November 6, 2009 and if you don’t think the Mouse is going to keep that one in theaters through Christmas you are crazy. However, what is going to happen when Fox unleashes Cameron’s first film in 12 years on December 18? Yeah, Avatar is going to be demanding as many theaters as possible… and guess what… it’s going to get ‘em. If the hype around the Titanic director’s latest film is any indication it is going to be a must see, and a film theater owners are going to want in their houses.
I really don’t think 3D will ever take hold of audiences… that is unless someone hires Johnny Chung Lee. Check out the video below and see how you can turn your Nintendo Wii into a 3D Monster!
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