This week, Disney announced that Marvel’s The Avengers will be screened in 3D as well as 2D when it opens this May. The announcement seemed oddly timed, given that the movie has been shooting since April, and it usually doesn’t take this long for a multi-national corporation to decide it wants to make more money. That means the movie will be converted to 3D in post (post-converted 3D), and everyone promises the post-converted 3D won’t be as crappy as it was in Clash of the Titans.  Slashfilm points out that Joss Whedon actually shot the end-credit scene for Thor in 3D, and decided he didn’t want to deal with all the 3D rig’s extra equipment. Whedon spoke to JoBlo about it, presumably while they tried not to stare at his enormous forehead:

“there definitely are movies that shouldn’t be in 3D” while assuring fanboys “THE AVENGERS isn’t obnoxiously 3D.”
“There’s no, ‘Oh look, we’re going to spend 20 minutes going through this tunnel because it’s in 3D!’ And no one is pointing at the screen the entire time. But it’s an action movie. Things tend to hurtle toward the screen anyway.”
Whedon says he was 100% behind the [3D] idea. “Yeah, it’s fun!…I’m not a big fan of extreme long lens, talky movies – I like to see the space I’m in and relate to it, so 3D kinda fits my aesthetic anyway. And the technology has advanced so far in the past couple years.”

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that if you’re still trying to get people to buy into this 3D upsell in the midst of obvious signs of decline, you’d want to put its best foot forward. In Slate’s report on the health of 3D back in September, for example, they reported that 3D screenings for Captain America (also post-converted) were making one-third of the money that 2D screenings earned. At least if you’re going to make it in 3D (Editor’s Note: please don’t make it in 3D), shoot it in 3D. But who knows, maybe the technology has come a long way, and this time it’s going to be different, and blah blah blah, maybe it won’t be as underwhelming as pretty much every other 3D movie I’ve ever seen. 3D! The Future is Meh!

Though as long as we’re post-converting to 3D, how bout doing those Scarlett Johansson cell phone pics? I’m tired of mashing my face against the screen to see inside of her butt crack.

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"Hey, kid! Stop all the downloadin'!"

Martin Scorsese’s 3D family movie, Hugo, opens November 23rd, a month before Steven Spielberg’s similarly Oscar-baity offerings, War Horse and Tin Tin. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law, Ben Special K Kingsley, Chloe Moretz, and newcomer Asa Butterfield, Hugo is based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The plot concerns an orphan who lives in the walls of a 30s French train station, who meets a nice girl who might hold the key to his dead father’s robot. Together, they can solve life’s mysteries and find true happiness if they can keep from getting mustachio’d by an evil security guard [citation needed]. I don’t know if it’s just my inappropriate crush on Chloe Moretz or my infamous dago bias, but if you ask me, this whimsical period piece about orphaned robot enthusiasts looks way better than Spielberg’s cheesy, maudlin horse porn.

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Before the 3D re-release of The Lion King came out and topped the box office two weeks running, the talk of the town was a report by Slate showing that 2D film screenings were kicking 3D’s ass in head-to-head showings — meaning many theaters actually stood to lose money by adding 3D showings (and the high-priced equipment). Which, along with some other factors, generally doesn’t bode well for the future of 3D movies.

Luckily, Sony has a plan, and that plan is to stop footing the bill for RealD glasses and make exhibitors pay for them. Wait, what?

Sony Pictures Entertainment has notified theater owners in a letter that it will no longer pay for 3D glasses as of May 1, 2012, marking a major policy shift that many other studios are likely considering.
But the notificiation probably won’t go over well with theater owners, since many feel like they’ve already coughed up enough money in converting their screens to 3D, and that they shouldn’t have to incur the cost of supplying glasses too, according to one source in the exhibition community.
Studios can spend $5 million to $10 million worldwide [on 3D glasses] for a tentpole, but most of the cost is incurred in the North American marketplace (studios pay after the fact, based on how many glasses were actually used).
Glasses for smaller films can cost $1.5 million to $2 million. Translated, 3D glasses account for about 50 cents of a theater ticket.
Sony, along with other studios, is in favor of moving toward an ownership model, requiring moviegoers to buy their 3D glasses at the theater (the studios argue that it could be a new revenue stream for exhibitors).

Who gave Sony the idea that people want to buy 3D glasses? Dammit, this is all V-Nasty’s fault.

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Slate recently published a long investigation of the financial health of 3D, and as you may have noticed from the line on the above graph that Vin Diesel could rail grind down, it’s looking pretty grim for 3D. Which is to say, great for us, because 3D sucks. First, an explanation of the graph:

The updated graph shows almost every major 3-D release since the beginning of 2009. The ratio of 3-D revenue to 2-D revenue per theater is shown on the Y-axis, and the dotted red line represents the break-even point. The trend that was beginning to take shape last summer has deepened in the last few months. (Data exclude any film that opened at fewer than 1,500 locations, and films with “3-D” in the title, which only a fool would see on a flat screen.)

The short answer is, 2D movies are earning more in head-to-head screenings.

For every movie that’s released in both 2-D and 3-D, how does the revenue from the two compare on a per-theater basis? (In other words: Which format brings in more money?) When Avatar opened in 2009, it earned about $15,800 for every theater that showed the film flat, and about $26,800 for every one that showed it in 3-D. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the owner of an old-fashioned theater might have increased her revenue by $11,000—or 70 percent—by upgrading her equipment and showing Avatar in 3-D.

A female theater owner, haha, good one, Slate.

For all the Avatar hype, this wasn’t an exceptional figure. Pretty much all of the 3-D films released in 2009 and early 2010 were earning from 50 to 100 percent more money from 3-D than 2-D on a per-theater basis. (Some movies, like Monsters vs. Aliens and The Final Destination, more than doubled their income.) The first clear sign of danger came the weekend of June 18, 2010. Toy Story 3 opened with $110.3 million in ticket sales, making it one of the most successful films in history. Yet the Pixar movie’s 3-D screenings contributed relatively little to its dazzling profits. Their per-theater revenue was at minus-5 percent compared to 2-D showings—the first time in recent history that 3-D had sunk below the break-even point on a film’s first weekend. Six weeks later, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore opened with $12.3 million in total sales, and a 3-D “bonus” of minus-10 percent. The monster profits from 2009 had all but disappeared by the end of the summer.

Probably because 2D Pixar movies are already really good at creating the illusion of three dimensionality — you know, kind of like your f*cking eyeballs. The only thing those dumb glasses do is help you pretend you weren’t crying during the beginning of Up.

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In addition to screening in 3D, showings of the Robert Rodriguez-directed Spy Kids 4 will also be accompanied by scratch-and-sniff cards handed out to the audience, which the studio is calling “SPY KIDS 4, IN 4D AROMA-SCOPE,” because obviously, the fourth dimension is smell (SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE). Oh, and one of the scents on the scratch-and-sniff card is “a spy baby’s diapers.” Never hire a baby spy, dudes. I paid my friend’s kid a thousand dollars to infiltrate the Kremlin and I’d swear all he did was drool and poop himself.

“When it came time to do Spy Kids 4, I couldn’t just go back and do 3D like everybody else is now. I had to bring something extra,” Rodriguez told the AP.

“And so I revolutionized moviegoing with scratch and sniff cards. Some might say I turned 3D on its nose.”

“Just watching my own kids with interactive gaming, you ask them to watch a movie, it just feels so passive to them. I thought, this helps bridge the gap. It’s an interactive thing, almost like playing a game while you’re watching the movie.”

“I made a movie about spy babies and robot dogs, in 3D, with scratch and sniff cards. And if they’re still not paying attention, we’re going to hand out silly string so the kids can fight with it in the theater. Have fun, parents.”

In 1981, Waters released Polyester in “Odorama,” while the 2003 toon Rugrats Go Wild also used scented cards. One of the Rodriguez smells is a spy baby’s diapers. “Originally, we didn’t have any really rancid smells, but kids wanted something really stinky in there,” Rodriguez told AP. “It really doesn’t smell that bad. No one’s going to get sick in the theater.” [Deadline]

So instead of the gritty realism of the genuine article, we get yet another watered-down, slick, Hollywood take on baby poop? WHEN WILL YOU STOP RAPING MY CHILDHOOD, ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, WHEN?