Research Guru / Moderator
Posted:
Mar 19, 2010, 3:35 AM
|
|
Heat placed on theaters to exhibit 3-D "Dragon"?
|
|
|
Paramount Pictures is breathing fire at theaters that won't show DreamWorks' How To Train Your Dragon in 3-D, industry executives told the Los Angeles Times.
The studio is strongarming theaters by saying that if they don't exhibit the animated family film on a 3-D screen, it will withhold a 2-D version that they would show in its place, four theater industry executives charged. Fearing reprisal, the four asked not to be named.
"The message is: If you have one 3-D screen available and you don't play [How To Train Your Dragon], they're not going to give you the version in 2-D," said one California theater operator. "It's an underhanded threat."
Asked about Paramount's efforts to get the movie onto 3-D screens, a studio spokeswoman declined to comment.
One person closely connected to Paramount said the studio is confident that it will book about the same number of 3-D screens to play How To Train Your Dragon as the 2,063 that Disney obtained for the opening weekend of Alice in Wonderland.
There are comparatively few 3-D screens in the United States. Many multiplexes have just one 3-D screen, so ticket sales would be strongly affected if a conventional version of the DreamWorks movie is unavailable to play on their other screens.
How To Train Your Dragon opens March 26, while Warner Bros.' live-action 3-D Clash of the Titans opens a week later. Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, released by Disney, is to last several more weeks on the big screen.
Meanwhile, Disney is urging theaters to continue screening Alice in Wonderland, which has made over $215 in domestic ticket sales alone to date. Unnamed "people familiar with the situation" told the Los Angeles Times that Warner Bros. is pressing the same theaters to skip Dragon in favor of putting Clash of the Titans on screen the following week.
This year, 19 3-D movies are slated for theatrical screenings, up from 14 in 2009.
"This is the most unusual and intense situation that I've ever seen," said Robert Bagby, president of Missouri-based B&B Theatres. The chain has 200 screens, of which just 40 of which are 3-D. "Of course, it's a wonderful problem for us that 3-D is doing so well in the market that we're having these kinds of issues," added Bagby, a 30-year veteran of the industry.
[Via Los Angeles Times -- www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-dragons18-2010mar18,0,3786136.story]
|
|
|
|
