Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 9, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
“In five to seven years, all films, regardless of their budgets or genres, will be made in 3D,” DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg predicted at the opening of the world’s first 3DX Film & Entertainment Technology Festival in Singapore on November 19, 2008. Since the entire world is three-dimensional, the Hollywood executive said, it was time for the screen to reflect that too—and not only in animated films.
“3D is our natural way of seeing and taking things in,” Katzenberg emphasized. “This is not a technical gimmick; by heightening the experience, it enables audiences to become fully immersed in a film.” The transition to 3D would take place not only in cinemas but on every screen, including mobile phones and laptops.
Alongside Katzenberg, other industry representatives such as Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group president Mark Zoradi are convinced that 3D film is the future. Moviegoers respond immediately to 3D offerings, Zoradi said, as demonstrated by the success of 3D titles such as “Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert” and “Chicken Little.” “Moviegoers clearly prefer 3D when they have a choice,” said the Disney executive, who believes a film in 3D can gross two to three times as much as its conventional 2D version.
To broaden the exhibition base for 3D films, Disney signed a five-picture deal with IMAX, beginning with Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol.” James Cameron’s science-fiction epic “Avatar,” scheduled for release by 20th Century Fox on December 17, 2009, was to open in both digital 3D and IMAX 3D. Producer John Landau, who had already produced the mega-hit “Titanic” with Cameron, was certain that 3D would have the same effect on cinema as stereo sound once had on audio. First, however, the film industry needed to overcome prejudices, because consumers still associated 3D with technical gimmicks, B movies and large-format presentations at amusement parks.
At the 3DX Film & Entertainment Technology Festival in Singapore, Disney showed the public 3D excerpts from its 1991 animated classic “Beauty and the Beast” for the first time; Disney was re-rendering the film for a 3D release in 2010. A 3D version of “Tron 2,” expected in 2011 or 2012, was also in production. This raised the number of Disney digital 3D releases planned for 2009 and 2010 to eleven, with another six 3D productions expected in 2011. The studio was therefore set to dominate the 3D cinema market over the next three years, supplying more than half of all 3D films released. In keeping with the animation studio’s tradition, most of its 3D output would consist of animated films.
“The biggest hurdle 3D has to overcome is not the product,” Zoradi observed, “but the installation of digital projection systems in cinemas.” Katzenberg expected 35 to 40 percent of viewers to choose the 3D version of the animated adventure “Monsters vs. Aliens,” due in March 2009. For films arriving 15 months later, such as the next “Shrek” sequel, he anticipated that 80 to 85 percent of all moviegoers would already opt for 3D.
The latest incarnation of three-dimensional cinema was made possible in no small part by the development of stereoscopic 3D technology, for which Quantel received the Engineering Excellence Award in Hollywood in November 2008. “3D will bring people back to the cinema who have not gone for a long time,” Katzenberg stressed. “This is not the kind of 3D our parents knew. It does not give viewers headaches or make them feel sick.”
Hollywood experts agreed that 3D’s ability to draw audiences into a film was also the key to its success. “There is no film experience more intense than 3D,” Landau confirmed. “With ‘Titanic,’ we used visual effects to make audiences feel as though they were right there. With ‘Avatar,’ we are using technology to catapult cinema audiences into another world.” For Katzenberg, 3D offered cinemas a unique opportunity to give visitors an experience unavailable at home. “The only place at home that might qualify is the closet,” the Hollywood executive said. “But nobody will want to watch a film in there for two hours.”
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