ShoWest attendees thinking positively, 3-D

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ShoWest attendees thinking positively

By Stephen Galloway
The Hollywood Reporter
March 8, 2008

After years of turmoil, distributors and exhibitors alike approach this year's ShoWest (which begins today and runs through Thursday at Bally's and Paris hotels, Las Vegas) with a widespread sense of optimism.

"The industry is healthy today, and it wasn't long ago that exhibition rose from the depths of bankruptcy," says Dan Fellman, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Domestic Distribution. "There has been a lot of consolidation. A number of companies have gone public, and of those that haven't, many have received financial backing from institutional investors. They are building smart, they are building functional, and they are building state-of-the-art."

Nowhere is that more evident than in the move to digitalize the nation's 38,000-plus movie theaters, a process that the studios and theater owners have long regarded as essential to bringing down the costs of making and shipping prints -- and also to pave the way for 3-D. After years of discussion, both sides have largely agreed on a formula that will cover the costs of installing digital equipment, now running at approximately $75,000 per screen.

"They are really preparing for the next major overhaul," says Chuck Viane, president of distribution at Disney. "The last big overhaul was stadium seating and reconstructing the infrastructure of their cinemas, and they are now at the doorstep of digital deployment. Once the DCIP deal is struck later this year, you will see a very strong movement across all cinema companies."

What Viane refers to is a deal now being negotiated for Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, a joint venture created by three of the biggest theater chains -- AMC Entertainment, Regal Entertainment Group and Cinemark USA -- to install digital equipment in all of their 14,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada. If the deal takes place as expected, the studios will agree to pay a fee every time the equipment is used to show their films, until the cost of installing the equipment has been covered. That fee, known as the Virtual Print Fee, would be an estimated $700-$1,000 per movie, per screen.

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3-D seen as boost for overseas markets


By Carl DiOrio
The Hollywood Reporter
March 11, 2008

LAS VEGAS -- It didn't take long to plop 3-D cinema front row center at ShoWest 2008, as a panel of international execs exuded broad enthusiasm for the technology Monday.

A morning seminar on the worldwide marketplace, moderated by The Hollywood Reporter vp and publisher Eric Mika, covered a spectrum of issues. But panelists placed a major emphasis on the extra-dimensional exhibition format.

"The big growth product we have as an industry going forward is 3-D," Paramount Pictures International president Andrew Cripps said.

Noting that the "premium experience" of 3-D will allow exhibitors to charge more for movie admissions, Cripps tried to rally enthusiasm among the foreign exhibitors in attendance at the seminar, one of several international day offerings at ShoWest.

"To say that every one of your products has to be in 3-D doesn't make sense (but) pretty much every one of our animated pictures is 3-D," said Anthony Marcoly, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.

Marcoly noted Disney had reined in its slate size recently to manage studio film costs, and other panelists acknowledged a bolstered commitment to cost containment. But Zucker said Sony remains committed to its "huge" slate.

"And we're also bolstering that with a lot of local production in some countries," he added.

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