Alice in Wonderland and a Shortage of 3D Screens
// March 1st, 2010 // Comments Off // Industry Trends
(c) 2010 The Walt Disney Company. All rights reserved.
by Marc Halperin
After all of the maneuvering of the past couple of weeks between Disney and exhibitors, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was revealed to the public in a Royal Charity Premiere. Early reviews attest that it is a gorgeous rendition of the classic story. Todd McCarthy of Variety however is less than pleased and Emmanuel Levy has reservations. The Hollywood Reporter is extremely positive. Anyone who has seen the trailer and viewed Burton’s previous work knows that it will be visually stunning even if the characters lack the depth that some of the critics have noted. This is probably one of the most highly anticipated films of the period within its target demographic. The trailers shown at Christmas were extremely enticing.
All of the distributors are in for a struggle over the next month as the 3D movies they have spent lavishly producing enter a market that should have had far more screens than have been installed. Can you say screen crunch? Maybe if some of those TARP funds had been spent on installing 3D it would have injected more cash into the economy than most of the other projects that haven’t yet been built. Avatar is currently on 2581 screens of which 2169 are in 3D but there are less than 4000 screens altogether. On top of that it is playing on 179 IMAX screens but according to Marketwatch there are only 400 of these screens in the world as of December 2009. There just aren’t enough 3D screens to handle the product in the pipeline now. Fox will keep Avatar in theatres but in many locations they will have to move into 2D screens. We are about to see a collision and it only gets worse as the year goes on with more 3D films reaching theatres every month.
Several years ago I predicted at a conference moderated by The Hollywood Reporter’s then Editor Robert J. Dowling at the UK Financing Forum in Hollywood that we would reach a point where the original financing of this 3D conversion would become critical. What was done in those early years was that several of the studios stepped forward and financed the conversion. Many may have forgotten this. Not having seen the contracts but understanding how distribution works I am sure there were clauses inserted that gave these companies first right of refusal on the screens they financed. The original companies that stepped forward were Fox and Paramount. Fox has Avatar occupying the majority of 3D screens now and Paramount has How To Train Your Dragon coming on March 26. Disney, Universal and Lionsgate announced at the ShowEast convention in 2008 that they were also going to help finance. However with the economic meltdown of 2008 it will be interesting to see how much of this money was actually advanced after ShowEast. Warners and Sony announced earlier this month that they would join in to hasten the conversion.
Distributors will be very busy on Monday March 1, checking their hold-overs, new openings and auditorium assignments. Fox could be sitting there with copies of their finance contracts at the ready to ensure that they keep every 3D screen that they are entitled to by these deals.
The next few weeks should be very interesting.
Directors Guild of America President Taylor Hackford announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2009.
