Ryan Nakashima in the Toronto Globe and Mail / Associated Press:
"Hollywood took a big step yesterday [March 11] toward offering more movies in 3-D, announcing deals to convert as many as 10,000 more theatre screens for the digital technology needed to accommodate the resurgent format.
"Access Integrated Technologies Inc. (AccessIT) said it had reached agreements with four studios — Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Universal Pictures — to finance and equip the screens in the United States and Canada during the next three years."
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"The digital technology can also be used to show 3-D movies with the addition of software and hardware costing about $25,000 per year for each screen.
"Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, a 3-D movie, pulled in $31.3-million in its opening weekend [in early Feb. 2008], an impressive feat because it played on only 683 screens, compared with many wide-release films that open on more than 3,000 screens and make half as much."
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At least 30 more 3-D movies are in the pipeline from Hollywood, including this summer's adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth [above, right].
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So, the next Journey to the Center of the Earth will have an added cinematographic dimension, but will it be as much fun — or even half as much fun — as the 1959 version directed by Henry Levin, adapted by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett, and starring James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Pat Boone, and Diane Baker?
The new version, by the way, was directed by Eric Brevig, adapted by Jennifer Flackett, Michael Weiss, and Mark Levin, and stars Brendan Fraser. It's scheduled to open in the US in July 2008.
THE UNKNOWN WOMAN in New York City
Well, it's time they did go 3-D — though movies such as the Jonas Brothers concert proves that 3-D films aren't all going to be box office hits.