Hollywood's 3D Miscalculation

http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/node/1947

Submitted by Nick Dager on Tue, 09/14/2010 - 12:18.

 

This is not another one of those articles predicting the death of Hollywood and its influence on the worldwide cinema scene. Hollywood, after all, if still capable of releasing movies such as this summer’s well deserved critical and box office successes Toy Story 3 and Inception. But this is an article suggesting that some of the decisions made of late by current studio executives seem certain to backfire sooner rather than later, if they haven’t already. How else to account for the twin facts that, as has been widely reported, summer movie attendance fell to its lowest number since 1997, yet revenues set a new record at $4.35 billion?

The reason for this, as has also been widely reported, is the fact that Hollywood released a record number of movies it said were 3D and theatres charged a higher price for those movies. I said that many of these were called 3D but, as anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention knows, most of them were shot in 2D and converted in post-production to something like 3D.

Audiences are beginning to notice the difference and are voting with their limited dollars. Hollywood.com estimated that the number of tickets sold from the first weekend of May through the U.S. Labor Day holiday was expected to drop 2.6 percent to 552 million, the lowest attendance since summer moviegoers bought 540.3 million tickets in 1997. In turn summer box-office revenue was expected to rise 2.4 percent to a record $4.35 billion in the U.S. and Canada as higher prices more than made up for the lower attendance, Hollywood.com estimated. The average ticket price increased 5.1 percent to $7.88 from last year’s $7.50, the biggest gain since a 6.3 percent jump in 2000.

Studios released seven sequels this summer, fewer than the 10 that came out during the summer of 2009, according to Hollywood.com. This year, 13 films generated more than $100 million in domestic ticket sales, down from 15 a year earlier.

Undoubtedly Hollywood studio executives are making the case to their corporate bosses that the poor numbers are a reflection of the bad economy. They are not. The economy was even worse last summer and, although it was admittedly thanks in large part to Avatar, last year was a record year in both box office attendance and revenue.

Which makes my point. Audiences will pay for good movies and will pay extra for well-made stereoscopic 3D movies. Avatar proved that last year and Toy Story 3 and Inception proved it again this year.

Undoubtedly there are factions inside Warner Bros who are cursing writer/director Christopher Nolan for refusing to allow the studio to convert Inception to 3D. Would that have enabled the movie to make more than the $277 million it was estimated to have earned? That’s a question that can never be answered definitively but I suspect not. It most certainly would have contributed to higher opening weekend revenues but audiences have demonstrated in recent weeks that they don’t find converted 3D movies nearly as compelling as movies created in stereoscopic 3D. Personally, I applaud Nolan’s decision and I don’t think a converted-to-3D version of Inception would have continued to attract sizable audiences months after it opened.

Even those people who are the most careful at converting a film from 2D to 3D will concede that the laws of physics will only allow them to go so far. The results can be very effective but they pale next to a movie that was skillfully shot in 3D. And, as this summer’s box office shows, the public at large is aware of the difference and are not willing to pay extra for it.

The question remains: have studio executives in Hollywood learned a lesson from this? A show of hands: who agrees with me that the likely answer is No?