Word: formatting
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...least, not when the movie's in 3-D. Only about 4,000 of the 39,000 screens in North American theaters are currently equipped to show movies in the suddenly megafashionable format, and though theater chains are scrambling to convert more screens, they and the studios still feel the shortage. This weekend there will be an unprecedented 3-D-theater traffic jam as Clash of the Titans joins last week's box-office champ How to Train Your Dragon and the Disney blockbuster Alice in Wonderland. That could make this the first weekend in movie history when...
...screens would hold for two weeks. This put a serious crimp in the release of Clash of the Titans, whose opening was delayed a week, both to complete the film's reformatting in 3-D and to secure more venues that could show it in that format. Clash opens Friday on about 1,500 3-D screens and 2,000 2-Ds. Industry analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations says Clash might have been expected to earn about $100 million this weekend - if it had secured all the 3-D screens it needed, which Warner Bros. could have done...
...Cash of the Titans The rush to 3-D began in earnest early last year, with much tub-thumping about how A-list directors like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron were testing the format. The box office verified that interest: four of the top dozen domestic hits of 2009 were shown in 3-D. Three were animated features: Up, Monsters vs Aliens and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The fourth film: Avatar. James Cameron's eco-epic, which quickly became the No. 1 moneymaker in movie history, proved a couple of things about 3-D. In the right hands...
...Half-Blood Prince) as for one that cost $15,000 (Paranormal Activity). But 3-D changes all that. You can charge audiences the moon to see a 3-D movie, and if you show it, they will come. The extra cost of making a movie in the format, or of jerry-building 3-D effects on a picture shot in the standard two dimensions, is perhaps 10% to 20% of the budget. A ticket for How to Train Your Dragon costs $12.50 in 2-D at a Manhattan movie house. For 3-D, it's $17.50 - a 40% surcharge...
...from $60 to $75 before the family even gets to the concession stand. For all of this, you can thank Cameron - and Tim Burton, who directed Alice in Wonderland, not to mention the mass audience's compulsion to see the big new movies in the big hot format...