Katzenberg tells ShoWest: '3D is great and it's here'

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Jeremy Kay in Las Vegas

31 Mar 2009 03:16

 

As expected the slow roll-out of 3D across North America and the world dominated the agenda of the opening day of ShoWest as delegates looked ahead to a gradual easing of the credit crunch and DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg flew into town to deliver a triumphant rallying cry to exhibitors.

 

Katzenberg’s presence at the condensed annual convention was by no means guaranteed and hinged on the results of last weekend’s 3D launch of Monsters Vs Aliens. In the end the film’s much lauded $59.3m three-day gross inspired Katzenberg to tell attendees at a seminar on the future of the industry, “3D is real, it’s great and it’s here.”

 

Hollywood’s most ardent champion of the format noted there were roughly 2,100 screens in North America equipped to show films in 3D and said that as the credit markets began to relax “our goal should be to have 7-8,000 3D screens installed by the end of 2010 – enough to play two 3D movies at the same time.”

 

Paramount Pictures International president Andrew Cripps said that given an improvement in the global markets he expected the roughly 1,500 international 3D screen count to double by the end of 2010. Cripps and Katzenberg are familiar to one another given that Paramount Pictures International is handling the overseas launch of Monsters Vs Aliens, which opens in most markets this weekend. Cripps noted the early release of the film in Russia was partly due to the high incidence of piracy as well as a national school holiday.

 

Paul Heth, president and general director of Rising Star Media, a joint exhibition venture between National Amusements and Soquel Ventures with a heavy presence in Russia, said piracy was such a problem in the country that day-and-date releasing or pre-North American releases were “essential”. He said the DVD release window had shrunk to four weeks compared to an average of four months in North America.

 

Heth called for more local language pictures in Russia and said superhero films did not always travel that well, or certainly not as well as animated films – Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was a huge hit in

Russia – or family titles.  “Local production is a game multiplier,” he said.Earlier in the day in the show's opening keynote address Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chairman Jim Gianopulos pledged the studio’scommitment to digital conversion. Gianopulos noted that at a time when the average working person in the US has 16 leisure hours a week andspends most of it playing games or surfing the net, ancillary markets – an outdated phrase if ever there was one – “provide financialsupport for bigger movies.”He moved to reassure exhibitors and drew a ripple of applause when hesaid the trick was to move releasing windows as close together aspossible without disrupting the earning power of each. “We’re in thistogether,” he said.

 

Gianopulos compared North American box office of $9.78bn for 2008 with international receipts of $18.35bn, adding somewhat speciously that if the US per-capita spend on film-going for a population of 340m was applied to the 6.5bn population of the rest of the world, international ticket sales would rise to $186.94bn.

 

Tomorrow in ShoWest's second day, Motion Picture Association Of America chairman and CEO Dan Glickman and National Association Of Theatre Owners president and CEO John Fithian will deliver their annual state of the industry addresses.Fithian will highlight statistics from 2008 that have been on his company’s website for several weeks, listing for example the $7.18 average US ticket price and 1.363bn admissions tally.Glickman will finally unveil the annual facts and figures pertainingto average production and marketing costs of a Motion Picture Association Of America film, among other things. The belief is that he wanted to keep a low profile about Hollywood’s record revenues so as not to jeopardise the possibility of subsidies from Washington.