The 3D anxiety that hit Hollywood at the start of the year is appearing justified as would-be 3D blockbusters are bombing at the box office. It's still early days, but will the new 3D revolution proclaimed by Avatar director James Cameron become just another short-lived cinema fad?
The latest bad news came from Disney, which spent some $175 million making the kiddie film Mars Needs Moms. The New York Times reports the flick drew an anemic $6.9 million in ticket sales during its first week, putting it "on track to become one of the biggest box-office bombs in movie history."
Such epic box-office disasters are rare at Disney. What went wrong? "There are a lot of excuses being floated," Disney executive Chuck Viane told the Times. One is asking $13 for children's 3D tickets whilst charging $8.75 for standard films. "Angry parents are balking at the surcharge being levied on 3D movies," wrote Geoffrey Mcnab in UK newspaper The Independent.
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Mars needs Moms may have been a turkey, but it's hardly the only problem. Cinema attendance has been slipping since 2002, and so far this year receipts reportedly are down 20 per cent compared to last year. Anxious executives grab at gimmicks, and when Avatar cashed in with the biggest gross on record, they stampeded for 3D.
"Hollywood loves a bandwagon and Avatar was a really big bandwagon," Brandon Gray, founder of film-industry website Box Office Mojo, told The Guardian. "But it's become a way for them to avoid what really matters - storytelling."
After the first 3D bandwagon crashed in the early 1950s, the red-and-green glasses version of the technology became a gimmick for second-rate horror movies. Another fad came and went in the early 1980s with The Amityville Horror and Jaws 3D. Today's technology is better, but still gives audiences eyestrain. The acid test is likely to be Steven Spielberg's first venture into 3D with Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, due out later this year. If that falls flat, everybody can go back to the flat screen for another 30 years.
