More Toilet Swirl

On 8.24 Slate‘s Bill Engvell took another look at the 3D revenue situation. A somewhat harsher view, that is, than the one presented by TheWrap‘s Daniel Frankel on 7.20, which basically said that 3D revenues are going south. Actually, says Engvell, “It looks to me that the revival is even worse off than we thought. Not only has the profitability of 3-D fallen in the past few months; it’s in a slide that goes back years.”

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20 thoughts on “More Toilet Swirl”

  4. This guy also makes the mistake the last guy made, namely, manipulating the data to conform to his conclusion that 3D is fading away again. What he and Frankel fail to realize is that for the most part, they’re talking about percentage of opening weekend revenues coming from 3D. And those are still hovering between 45 and 70%. The closest he comes to a decent analysis it to show that, on a per-screen basis, Toy Story 3D may have made less than the 2D version. But that’s just one film among the dozen or so he analyzes.

    He also seriously botches his analysis of films like Piranha 3D and Step Up 3D, which in my market appeared ONLY in 3D. He shows them as outliers in some of his graphs, but then figures them into his analysis later on.

    The big issue that I see is that a lot of the capital investment has now been done. It doesn’t cost a theater chain any more to show a digital movie in 3D than 2D. And yet, they’re still getting around 50% of their opening weekend’s gross from 3D.

    I think the heavy premium for 3D will eventually come down, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. All it will take is another Avatar (which may be Tron: Legacy) to knock these graphs askew again.

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  5. 3D is a fad. Comparing 3D with sound is delusional, because sound isn’t as invasive. The viewer isn’t obligated to wear glasses, when he watches a film with sound or color.

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  6. I wrote this earlier but the premium is already gone at some local theaters here. It’s bring your own glasses or buy a pair for one euro. So that should solve that if others start doing it that way as well.

    Also, I believe it’s mainly the critics and the press who (and rightly so!) who’re causing the downfall of 3D. It’s all negatives simply because there’s so much crappy 3D around. Just look at Piranha. The only reason it’s 3D is because it makes the movie extra crappy. 3D as a b-movie quality. That’s essentially a downfall by itself.

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  7. I really wanted to believe 3D could be used for good and not evil, especially when I saw 3D previews for movies like the Hubble doc and saw how much more immersive it made simple crowd shots or landscape views. The thing that sent me teetering closer to the anti-3D crowd was Nolan’s argument that it put too many limitations on the director…

    I still suspect that, if properly filmed in 3D, one could make even a small, dialogue-oriented, action-free Coen-esque movie that just felt more substantial with non-obnoxious use of the extra dimension.

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  9. As much as I agree people who think 3D is the 2nd coming of sound are delusional, until the next big tentpole opens (which is, what, HARRY POTTER?) this is yet the latest installment of lazy journalistic statistical masturbation posing as analysis.

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  10. It is already pretty much over in any large sense, in terms of the cinema. The populace has said that given the choice between 2 and 3d, more than not they would take the 2d because it is less annoying, brighter, and more involving. Hollywood did themselves in on this latest version of this fad. A few months ago I read the moron that ‘invented’ 3d back in the 50′s saying that “2d is dead” well, not so much really eh buddy. It seems like a lot of people looked at 3d and went “so what”, it does not add much to the cinematic experience.

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