ShareThisBefore the Na'vi in James Cameron's "Avatar" and Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" took on another dimension -- and an extra few bucks for each ticket sold -- movie-theater owners spent between $65,000 to $125,000 per auditorium to retrofit screens and projectors to show the reach-out-and-touch-air effects in 3-D films.
The glasses? Some cost theater owners from $20 to $40 each.
And if record-breaking box-office ticket sales in 2009 are any sign, theater owners expect the investment to pay off.
"It's not going to be like the '80s or the '50s," said Dan Harkins, CEO and owner of Harkins Theatres, referring to other eras when studios and theaters dabbled in 3-D effects to sell tickets, he said. "It's our firm belief, after carefully watching the 3-D evolution, that it's not going away," he said.
So far, 3-D screens and movies are scarce. Just 21 films are being released in 2010 out of about 600 films total. Of 39,380 movie screens nationwide, fewer than 10 percent can show 3-D films.
It has allowed movie theaters to charge a premium for the experience, sometimes $3 to $8 more than a regular ticket.
"We're seeing that it certainly has the potential to be very popular and very lucrative," said Patrick Corcoran, a spokesman for the National Association of Theatre Owners.
It typically costs about $65,000 to convert a standard movie-theater auditorium from showing reels of films to presenting digital movies. There are 7,593 screens showing digital films nationwide with about 100 to 150 more being converted each month, he said. Maintaining digital projectors can cost five times more on average, and it can cost another $25,000 to make the auditorium capable of showing a 3-D film, he said.
For Harkins, the cost is closer to $100,000 to install a digital projection system and another $25,000 on top to make it 3-D capable because of the technology he's chosen to install, in some cases a duel-projection system that can cost twice as much.
Of Harkins' 430 screens in five states, 56 are digital. Out of that, 24 can show 3-D movies.
Harkins, for now, is shouldering all of that cost to convert his screens to a digital system since offers from studios to offset the cost have come with conditions.
The studios could have a say in what previews are shown before their movies and choose which auditorium the movie will appear in, strings he wouldn't want to be attached to, he said.
"I can't see (theaters in) small towns doing it until it becomes economically viable," he said of the industry's conversion to digital.
Digital or not, movie theaters have found fortune during the recession. For years, observers speculated that the rise in less expensive large-screen televisions or easier access to DVDs would curb movie attendance, or more recently, the economic recession would make people unwilling to buy tickets, let alone buy overpriced snacks once they got to the theater.
But they did.
U.S. movie theaters sold a staggering $10.6 billion worth of tickets in 2009. The average price paid was about 11 cents higher than in 2008, but there were still 1.4 billion tickets sold, 5.3 percent more than the year prior, according to statistical site boxofficemojo.com.
(Reach Kimberly Pierceall at kpierceall(at)PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
