Dreamworks 3-D riding out economic crisis
By HIAWATHA BRAY, Boston Globe
First published in print: Thursday, December 18, 2008
One of Hollywood’s top producers said the ongoing financial crisis is hampering his efforts to release digital 3-D movies.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., said all future movies from his studios will be made in digital 3-D. But today only about 1,500 of the 36,000 theater screens in America are capable of showing such films,
“Until the financial markets come unstuck, which is probably late in the first quarter, the next round of the digital rollout is on a very slow pathway,” Katzenberg said during a visit to Boston earlier this week to show off clips from his studio’s upcoming film, “Monsters vs. Aliens.”
It costs about $70,000 to convert a single movie screen to the digital projection system for the 3-D films. But many theater owners can’t afford to make the switch. Theaters are finding it tough to borrow the money, as banks tighten their lending practices after years of ill-advised loans.
Katzenberg said about 2,500 screens should be converted to digital 3-D by March, in time for the release of “Monsters vs. Aliens.” Katzenberg thinks credit markets will have loosened up by May 2010, when DreamWorks Animation releases the fourth in its series of Shrek movies. He expects there will be 7,500 theaters capable of showing the film in digital 3-D.
Katzenberg noted the percentage of Americans going to movies has steadily declined for decades. Last year, the industry sold 1.4 billion movie tickets, 38 million fewer than in 1998, even though the US population grew about 30 million during the period. Katzenberg called digital 3-D cinema “the greatest opportunity of my time to reverse this,” and compared it to the introduction of soundtracks to movies in the 1920s and color films in the 1930s.
Read this full article - Dreamworks 3-D riding out economic crisis