3-D Starting to Look Flat at the Box Office

As more movies play in digital 3-D, there’s evidence that audiences are becoming less interested in the ballyhooed format that many in Hollywood have predicted will stem the long-term erosion of theater attendance.

Box office data for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which opened last Wednesday, shows that theaters with at least one screen playing the film in 3-D generated on average, 1.4x as much in ticket sales as those that only showed the picture the old fashioned 2-D way. (A breakdown by individual screens within multiplexes was not available.)

The higher gross represents a mix of ticket price surcharges, which are typically $2 to $3 for digital 3-D, and higher attendance.

The ratio of grosses in theaters with 3-D screens to those that are 2-D only has declined significantly and fairly consistently since My Bloody Valentine, the first film this year to play on a mix of both, suggesting audience interest in the new format is waning.

Here’s how much higher ticket sales were for theaters with 3-D screens compared with theaters with only 2-D screens on the opening weekends for the five major releases so far this year (the numbers are based on studio estimates, as reported by The Times, Boxofficemojo.com and Variety):

- My Bloody Valentine 3-D: 6.4x
- Coraline: 3x
- Monsters vs Aliens: 2.1x
- Up: 2.2x
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: 1.4x

Those figures, of course, don't fully represent the financial advantage of 3-D screens compared with 2-D screens, because many theaters feature both; 1,620 of Ice Age's 4,099 U.S. and Canadian locations played the film in 3-D, but 1,205 of those also played it in 2-D. Average grosses within those 1,205 probably were dragged down somewhat by their 2-D screens.

Nonetheless, as an apples-to-apples comparison, the decline in 3-D's advantage is significant and curious. It's partially due, no doubt, to the rising number of theaters equipped with 3-D screens. January's My Bloody Valentine was in 1,033 of them. By the time Monsters vs. Aliens came out in March, there were 1,550. Ice Age was on 1,620.

The more theaters with 3-D screens there are in a given region, the more they may split audiences interested in the technology and thus lower their average gross.

It's also possible that as 3-D releases increase in frequency -- Up came out four and a half weeks before Ice Age, G-Force follows just three weeks later -- audiences become a little less enchanted by what they get for their extra money. Other upcoming releases using the technology include August's The Final Destination, September's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, October's re-release of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, November's A Christmas Carol and December's Avatar.

There's certainly no sure evidence that films are consistently doing better as a result of 3-D. While many factors affected the movie's performance, including the Fourth of July falling on a Saturday, it's notable that Dawn of the Dinosaurs earned less domestically in its first five days than the 2-D Ice Age: the Meltdown, grossed its first three days in March of 2006.

By Ben Fritz, Los Angeles Times

Comment by Angela Wilson Gyetvan, VP, Marketing and Sales, 3ality Digital:
Mr. Fritz' take on consumers' enthusiasm for 3D movies is interesting, but premature and lacking in sufficient analysis. While he tries to account for possible competition between 2D and 3D screens, the numbers as reported don't analyze the varying target audiences for the films ("My Bloody Valentine" appealed to a totally different audience than the other movies mentioned), and he closes the analysis by citing low incremental ticket sales for "Ice Age 3," which opened on the sort of holiday weekend -- July 4th fell on a Saturday this year-- which is generally known to be disastrous for box office, no matter what format.

There are also the softer variables to deal with, as well: For instance, "Ice Age 3" is the third movie in a franchise, while "Up" was a new film from highly successful studio. To try to take all these variables and translate them into a statement such as "consumer interest in 3D is flattening," without doing any primary research, to boot, could be regarded as somewhat irresponsible.

In this day and age, with its instant news cycle, I am chagrined to see a reporter to present such a situation as the truth, rather than presenting it as a theory to be tested.