Blockbusters get 3-D update
McClatchy Newspapers
LOS ANGELES — Like a bunch of aging starlets, some older blockbusters are undergoing major cosmetic enhancement to prepare for their comebacks.
Hollywood has begun converting some of its highest-grossing titles to 3-D for planned re-release at the box office, including “Star Wars,” “Titanic” and “Top Gun.” The surprisingly strong ticket sales for the 17-year-old animated movie “The Lion King 3D,” which Disney converted and returned to theaters last weekend, is likely to spur even more updates of catalog films.
For studios, it’s easy to see why spending $10 million or so to render a beloved film in three dimensions holds appeal: There’s a built-in fan base. But there are risks, too: As the number of 3-D films in theaters has ballooned, American audiences have become more selective about which ones they deem worth the premium ticket prices.
And movies converted to 3-D — as opposed to those originally filmed in the format — have a particular taint on them, thanks to studios’ hasty use of the technique to squeeze a few more dollars from weak titles such as “Clash of the Titans” and “Gulliver’s Travels.”
As Hollywood looks into its archives for potential conversion candidates, there is debate about which films warrant the time and expense, who should be their aesthetic guardian and what the artistic rationale is for altering a sometimes decades-old film.
At the behest of director James Cameron, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures are spending $18 million to convert his 1997 epic, “Titanic,” the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, to 3-D. (Cameron’s “Avatar,” filmed in 3-D, is the top-grossing film ever.)
“All of my goals when I made the film originally are furthered by converting it to 3-D,” said Cameron, who has been an ardent advocate of the format, and is co-chairman of a company, Cameron 5/8 Pace Group, that makes 3-D cameras and equipment. “I wanted to put you there in 1912. ... Doing it in 3-D makes it seem more real, more visceral, more immediate. The drama, the romance, the jeopardy — all of those things will be increased by the 3-D.”
Cameron, in an interview at the 3D Entertainment Summit in Hollywood last week, said he is devoting a year to converting “Titanic,” a process that effectively makes every shot of the more than three-hour movie a laborious visual effects project. For instance, if Cameron digitally moves Leonardo DiCaprio’s and Kate Winslet’s faces farther apart to create depth on the screen, it creates a blank spot behind them that needs to be painted to match the pink-orange sunset in the rest of the frame.
Fox and Paramount will release the film in April, timed to the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.
If there were any worries about its box-office prospects, Cameron said, they probably were put to rest by last weekend’s performance of “The Lion King 3D,” which took in $30.2 million, more than the top three new films in release did combined.
The movie was No. 1 at the box office again this weekend, reaching a gross of more than $60 million for its two weeks in re-release.
“The Lion King 3D” cost Disney less than $10 million to convert. The studio, which originally had planned a two-week run leading up to the release of the film on Blu-ray in October, may extend its release.