More Bad 3-D News, Samsung snubs Real-D - Page 4

Irkuck, countless articles in the U.S. media have people reporting headaches and eyestrain from cinema 3-D. Countless.

Steve, I certainly didn't take your comments as anti-3-D. Just accurate.

Taffy, you're like Fox News. Selective presentation of facts doesn't make your completely irrelevant and unsupported conclusions any more accurate.

This is what actually happened with Harry Potter, as opposed to your fantastical notion that it was some sort of 3-D success:

BTIG media analyst Richard Greenfield observed that only 43 percent of the film's gross came from 3D sales (including 9 percent from IMAX). Only 34 percent of the audience chose to buy 3D tickets (28 percent for non-IMAX 3D). Greenfield surmises that if more theaters had shown the film in 2D or that the existing 2D theaters had been larger, the percentage of 3D ticket-buyers would have been even lower. "3D has collapsed in the United States," Greenfield wrote. "We expect international 3D box [office] to trend down over time to reach similar levels to the United States."

Only one third of the audience chose 3-D despite relentless promotion!

"Of this summer’s four major 3-D releases — Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Kung Fu Panda 2, Green Lantern, and Cars 2 — not a single one managed to earn more than half of its opening-weekend grosses from 3-D. "

The good news? Shlock still performs decently in 3-D.
"60 percent of Transformers 3‘s domestic opening-weekend grosses came from 3-D."

That's still under half the tickets sold!

"...compare that with the whopping 85 percent of Avatar’s box-office total hauled in by 3-D and you can see why enthusiasm for the format, once heralded as cinema’s biggest revolution since the advent of talkies, has been cooling over the last several months from Wall Street to the executive suites of Hollywood."

More good(fella) news for 3-D..

"But little noticed in those numbers was the fact that Hugo earned 75% of its revenue from 3-D screens. The movie, which is Scorsese's first foray into 3-D, was released about evenly between 2-D and 3-D screens. To put that 75% in perspective, the average family movie earns 60% of its revenue from 3-D, according to investment firm B. Riley."

and alas, some bad news...

" The recent Puss in Boots earned 51% of its opening weekend gross from 3-D and Kung Fu Panda 2 earned just 45% , according to BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield."

And more bad news... While Scorsese's Hugo sold tickets in 3-D, the movie is a bust. It's going to cap at under $70 million in the U.S. And Spielberg's "Tintin"? While a hit overseas, yet another kid-oriented, made-for-3-D extravaganza is going to evaporate in the U.S. and fail to reach $50 million in all likelihood.

That's the reality. 3-D is failing in the marketplace.

1) It's losing share of the movie box office. Even though more movies are available in 3-D, the percentage of tickets sold in 3-D is falling for said movies. (And the case can be made that the only true mega-hits that were 3-D oriented by nature were Avatar -- which of course is amazing -- and Transformers, which proves that the Chicken McNuggets of movies still has a place on the place despite the lack of anything recognizable as chicken.)
2) Even though many TVs are sold with 3-D capability, most are never used to display any 3-D in the home. Ever. (It's probably true that the most aggressive 3-D user is hard pressed to exceed 5% of his video watching in 3-D under any circumstances. While that might seem like it's akin to how things stood at the start of the HD era, when we revisit this question in 24 months, the disparity in the respective trajectories will be stunning.)
3) Cable and satellite broadcasters offer nearly no content in 3-D, and the trends are moving toward less not more.

This doesn't mean it's hopeless for 3-D, but it looks bad. And unless there are some positive trends soon, it's going to start looking worse.

You're kidding, right?

3-D is 3-D and sort of sells itself would be a much more accurate assessment.

You can ignore facts as long as you want to. Commercial failure after commercial failure speaks for itself. Greenfield was reporting box office results -- that's called data.

Scorsese making a kids-oriented movie that does next to zero U.S. box office speaks volumes. And please don't rely on George Lucas to make your arguments. The guy recycles the same 6 movies over and over. That's not innovation.

The market is rejecting 3-D. No matter what you actually wish was happening.

The business side is not taking care of itself. Not sure why you aren't getting that. Me personally? I'm not sitting in my living room wearing glasses to watch TV -- at least not more than once in a while. In the movie theater, I'll do it now and again for something that merits it. Something like Avatar... or Hugo apparently.

Not yet, we saw Mission Impossible instead.

What is this demand? It's pulling "Arthur Christmas" numbers at the box office, despite the 3-D ticket premium. I'm not going to lie, I'm not a Scorsese fan, but I'm interested in Hugo anyway. That said, the numbers don't lie: Hugo is a box-office bust. It has fantastic critical acclaim and it's still a box-office bust. That isn't my opinion, that's fact.

My humanity? Seriously, Peter? Because I'm questioning the business prospects of Americans reversing 70 years of habits and sitting in their living rooms suddenly donning goggles, you are questioning my humanity? Seriously?

I'm an enthusiast. I'm just a realist. The amount of non-BluRay content being produced in 3-D is virtually zero. The amount of even BluRay being watched in 3-D is nearly zero. When I told you all HD-DVD would lose, you also accused me of being a non-enthusiast. I was right. What I'm telling you right now, is absent some rapid shift toward passive and ideally some shift toward viable glasses-free, 3-D in the home is going to be a niche or a footnote. And it's not doing especially well at your local multiplex either.

Perhaps you haven't read the countless negative stories about movie theaters showing 3-D at half brightness. Or the many movies where the 3-D appears to be an afterthought. For every Hugo, there are 10 non-Hugos.

This kind of pap is offensive. My "research facility" is the world. Not your shop. Or perhaps you haven't checked lately, but most of us aren't watching on your toroid screens.

I don't need to wedge my butt into a Bugatti every day to have a sense of the future of automobiles. In fact, doing so would likely distort any perspective on the future I might have.

I'm not really addressing video games, I admit. That said, most videogamers are also ignoring 3-D.


I think you read it that way even though that's not what I'm saying.

The data presents a clear picture: 3-D is not catching on in the marketplace. Despite the presence of more 3-D movies, there are actually fewer tickets being sold in 3-D both relatively and -- quite possibly and almost certainly in 2012 -- on an absolute basis. Outside the theater, every single metric is dreadful: programming hours, BluRays watched in the home in 3-D, etc.

You can spin data any way you want when your business plan relies on selling 3-D TVs. But the reality is, industry TV forecasts banked on people going and buying no 3-D TVs this year and those forecasts proved optimistic by about 40 million units.

Nowhere do I say this is the end for 3-D. I'm not what you think I am. I'm the canary in the coal mine, not the naysayer. Those are pretty different things, but the subtlety is lost on the fanboys who want their precious new toys to be popular.

At current trends, there will be virtually no broadcast content in 3-D in 2012. If you think that suggests some kind of groundswell for the technology, I'd suggest you're mistaken. At current trends, there will likely be no increase in Hollywood releases in 3-D in 2012 as well coupled with a continued decline in the average buy rate of 3-D among movies released in 3-D (new releases as obviously 100% of Titanic 3-D tickets will be sold in 3-D, ditto Phantom Menace, Beauty and the Beast and all the other re-releases).

The trends are almost all negative save a few: More TVs with 3-D are being sold (not watched in 3-D but sold). Nearly all BluRay players support 3-D (even though they are rarely hooked up to 3-D capable TVs). Several mfrs. are supporting passive 3-D in 2012 to try to break free of the tyranny of expensive, battery-based active glasses. The other mfrs. at least understand the need for standard glasses. A decent number of Hollywood releases will again be in 3-D. Old, beloved movies are being re-released in 3-D. In other words, 3-D is not doomed in 2012. But it's not moving forward either. Technologies need to move forward or they die. That's just reality.

100% correct. And you and I agree on pretty much nothing. So this says a lot.


Oh, that's easy. First of all, active glasses require things like batteries and technology. Passive glasses, by contrast, are really the same stuff you find at the theater. They cost about 50 cents to manufacture and you can collect a bunch after seeing a 3-D movie or two -- for free. Right now, LG can get $150 for their "tub" of passive glasses. But eventually, passive glasses will retail for $10 for 10 pair. Active glasses never will -- at least no decent ones.

The reason I started this thread was that it seemed probable Samsung was going to actually adopt RealD and you'd be able to quite literally use those theater glasses at home. That's on hold for the moment. But even without it, I'd expect the major mfrs. going passive in 2012 to start offering very, very cheap glasses.

The lack of 3-D growth in gaming, however, would suggest growth. I admit I don't have stats, but I believe 3-D gaming is not growing. It's certainly not growing quickly.

I think it's more than bad conversions, although I absolutely agree that bad conversions do not help. The fact that exhibitors want the extra revenues, but don't want to pay to run projectors at the appropriate brightness, however, is hard to spin. There is widespread interest in the money and widespread indifference for the technology and the "art".

The picture is bleak. And for every Hugo or Avatar, there are 10 films where there is no artistic merit to 3-D. But I'll go farther, most films do not benefit from being made or shown in 3-D. Do you think that's going to change? If so, I'd call that an overly optimistic view of the future. 3-D exhibition dates back six decades. There are reasons beyond technology that video and still reproduction are almost exclusively two dimensional.

They don't. You choose to read them that way even though they never say "3-D is doomed" or any such thing. They paint a realistic, matter-of-fact picture of a technology that is struggling in the marketplace and is arguably on a precipice. If things don't change soon in terms of adoption, you can assume there will be a pullback even from Hollywood -- which is currently the only bulwark of support that exists at all. Should that bulwark fall, then we talk about 3-D being doomed.

No, it's not just as valuable. Rehashes of old movies are not going to drive the industry even though Disney gets to use The Lion King 3-D to paper over the failure of Cars 2 (Note: Cars 2 made money; it just made a lot less money than they wanted it to because it was the first Pixar movie that didn't generate a preponderance of critical acclaim and that hurt its audience. And will hurt its DVD/BluRay business too.)

The movie business has a problem: People are not going as much as they once did. Part of the reason is high ticket prices. 3-D is actually making that problem worse. If 3-D doesn't deliver audiences to theaters, it's not going to get people to pay money to have 3-D at home.

Your notion that 3-D re-releases are important to 3-D adoption is like saying Imax is important for Imax adoption. If 3-D becomes nothing more than a niche to sell some high-priced tickets it will (a) be limited to movies where selling a 3-D version is capable of even doing that (e.g. Transformers) and (b) further recede as a home technology.

There is not going to be some massive re-release of old DVDs in 3-D where people go spend money on them -- again. And currently, the video owning/rental business is shifting rapidly away from older models (buying discs, Blockbuster/video store rentals) to new ones (streaming, digital PPV, Redbox). The latter are barely supporting HD. It's simply fantastical to believe they are going to be big supporters of 3-D.

It might survive as a niche, it's hard to know. The reality is: If it isn't popular, it might not survive as a niche either. Or, alternatively, it might be limited to very few films going forward. It might also be limited to 30-40 studio releases and virtually no broadcast / cable content. All is hard to see right now; but the trajectory is not exceptional -- which is my entire point.