S'pore role for Lucas' new movie

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_589656.html

Oct 12, 2010
S'pore role for Lucas' new movie
Irene Tham

Artist's impression of Lucasfilm Singapore's eight-story building in Fusionopolis. The 38,000 sq m 'campus' will be ready by 2012.

THE father of the highly successful Star Wars movie franchise will set the Singapore arm of his film production company to work on his new animation movie.

The film by George Lucas, possibly in 3-D, is slated for global release in 2013.

For this and other undertakings in visual effects and games creation, Lucasfilm Singapore is looking to hire at least 50 artists here by March. Together with the artists among the company's 400 employees here, they will see to aspects of the film like texturing, compositing, lighting and modelling for the characters and its sequences.

Before this, the only experience the artists here have had in producing something by Lucas was for the animated television series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, for which they did only 40 per cent of the production work.

Details of the full-length animation film are still under wraps. It is understood that the key creative work in scripting and design will still be done at Lucasfilm's San Francisco headquarters.

Ms Micheline Chau, the president and chief operating officer of Lucasfilm, told The Straits Times that a feature animation unit will be set up within Lucasfilm Singapore.

itham@sph.com.sg

James Cameron Flirting With 3D 'Cleopatra'

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/james-cameron-flirting-with-cleopatra

James Cameron Flirting With 3D 'Cleopatra'
MIKE FLEMING | Thursday October 14, 2010

File this one under tantalizingly possible. James Cameron and Sony Pictures Entertainment are exploring the very real possibility that he will direct Angelina Jolie in a 3D version of Cleopatra, an SPE adaptation of the Stacy Schiff book Cleopatra: A Life. Jolie is attached and anxious to make the movie. Scott Rudin, who acquired the book, is producer. The talks are serious but by no means conclusive yet. Meanwhile, Deadline's Nikki Finke reports that Sony Pictures Entertainment Co-Chair Amy Pascal decided to fast-track its PG-13 and 3D Cleopatra project after screenwriter Bran Helgeland wrote what was is being described as a "brilliant script deserving of epic treatment" all about "what the Romans took from Egypt". In addition, Pascal wants to own the Angelina Jolie franchise the same way it owns the franchises of Adam Sandler and Will Smith because "she's a real star who can open a movie by herself" and "she knows she was born to play this part" because it's the "greatest female heroine" that ever lived. Pascal is hoping for a start date in 2011 but has acknowledged that "it won't be cheap" and is calling this her Gone With The Wind epic. Indeed, a project of this size and scope is a huge risk for any studio, especially considering how much attention will be focused on the production and the last time the story of Cleopatra was made into a movie. The Egyptian queen got her big screen closeup in the 1963 film with Elizabeth Taylor in the title role. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed the film, which started with a $2 million budget that ballooned to $44 million (the equivalent of over $300 million today) not the least because Taylor became ill and almost died. The production nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox, despite being the year's highest grossing pic with $26 million. However, with James Cameron as director, he has the ability to produce a huge worldwide spectacle where every penny will be on the big screen. He has several of his own projects in the works, including a title called The Dive, but there is no other outside project he is looking at but this one as he develops the Avatar sequel.

Stacy Schiff's biography peels away the layers to reveal the true Cleopatra, a much more interesting woman than the Hollywood version, and, as it turns out, a formidable queen after all, according to reviews. A Pulitzer Prize-winning American nonfiction author and guest columnist for The New York Times, Schiff digs up astonishing and rare facts about the queen that could make the film into an entirely new story. Schiff herself has said about Jolie as Cleoptra, "physically, she's the perfect look, and is hoping for Brad Pitt to play Mark Antony (just as Liz Taylor's then lover, Richard Burton, did in the 1963 epic). "Angelina Jolie radiates grace and power, exactly the qualities that Stacy Schiff finds in her biography of the most intriguing ruler who ever lived," the book's publisher, Little Brown's Michael Pietsch, told reporters.

As for 35-year-old Jolie, she has been a tomb raider and a spy and even a queen (she played Queen Olympias in 2004's Alexander.) But she has had a lifelong fascination with Cleopatra and has always wanted to play the Queen of the Nile. She once told reporters: "I haven’t done a historical epic of that nature and she’s always been fascinating to me because I feel like, as much of her story has been done big, it’s never been done accurately. Not that any movie can get history perfectly well. There is no universal truth to history in some films, but you can get closer and I feel there’s a lot that has been unexplord about her. But there's a lot that would have to come together for that to work." And, as recently as at Sony's Salt premiere in Hollywood, she told reporters "I would be honored" to play Cleopatra in an upcoming new biopic. "But," Jolie added, "we haven't gotten the script yet." But then Helgeland's screenplay came in. Scott Rudin bought the rights to the book envisioning Jolie in the role from the very beginning and later acknowledging that Cleopatra "is being developed for and with Jolie".

Since then, Jolie has been heavily involved in the project. In still another interview, Jolie said, "I will play it differently to Elizabeth Taylor, but I could never be as lovely as she was. We are trying to uncover the truth about her as a leader and not just a sex symbol which she really wasn't -- she didn't have many lovers, maybe only two, and they're men she had children with." Angelina has said she was stunned by what she learned when she started researching Cleopatra. "She was misunderstood and her life story was written wrongly. I always thought her life was very glamorous. Then I read her story and found a different side to her - that she was a mother, leader and an intellect who spoke five languages! Her upbringing also reflected her relationship with Rome -- all that is much more interesting than what she was summed up to be."

The Jolie project isn't the only Cleopatra film to make headlines in recent years. In 2008, director Steven Soderbergh reportedly began developing Cleo, a 3D rock musical version of the Egyptian queen's story with Catherine Zeta-Jones in mind for the title role. The film fell by the wayside.
Cameron has done most of his directing at Fox with Titanic and Avatar, and he is hard at work on a sequel to the latter. As a producer, Cameron is making the Shane Salerno-scripted 3D reboot of Fantastic Voyage for Fox, but he is already working off campus, moonlighting at Universal as producer of At the Mountains of Madness, the adaptation of HP Lovecraft that Guillermo del Toro plans to direct in 3D.

‘Star Wars’ saga in 3-D will start in theaters in 2012

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2010/09/28/star-wars-saga-in-3d-will-start-in-theaters-in-2012/
‘Star Wars’ saga in 3-D will start in theaters in 2012
Sept. 28, 2010

Ben Fritz has big news from Skywalker Ranch...

George Lucas watched the massive success of “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland” in the 3-D format and decided it was time for a return of the Jedi.

“Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” will return to theaters in 3-D in 2012 and will be followed in the stereoscopic format by the five other live-action movies set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic special-effects shop is overseeing the 3-D conversion. 20th Century Fox will release them, as it has done for all previous “Star Wars” films.

Lucas has said publicly on more than one occasion that the technological strides of James Cameron’s “Avatar” persuaded him to reconsider his longtime disdain for 3-D. After the Golden Globes, for instance, he told Access Hollywood that he was investigating the possibilities of converting his Skywalker family epic into the trendy format. “Haven’t been a big fan of 3-D, but that movie definitely improves in [the field of] 3-D … we’ve been looking for years and years and years of trying to take ‘Star Wars’ and put it in 3-D,” Lucas explained to “Access.” “But, [the] technology hasn’t been there. We’ve been struggling with it, but I think this will be a new impetus to make that happen.”

In a press release LucasFilm is expected to put out soon that was obtained by The Times, ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll made clear that his company doesn’t intend to put out a sub-par 3-D conversion. Some conversions done in a rush have turned off moviegoers and critics.

“Getting good results on a stereo conversion is a matter of taking the time and getting it right,” Knoll said in a statement. “It takes a critical and artistic eye along with an incredible attention to detail to be successful. It is not something that you can rush if you want to expect good results. For ‘Star Wars’ we will take our time, applying everything we know both aesthetically and technically to bring audiences a fantastic new ‘Star Wars’ experience.”

Watch closely, ‘Star Wars’ hologram TV is coming

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article7140259.ece

The Sunday Times May 30, 2010
Watch closely, ‘Star Wars’ hologram TV is coming
John Harlow

THREE-DIMENSIONAL television may be the latest in home cinema, but it will soon seem so 2010. Scientists are already planning its successor — holographic television.

On a holo-TV, images will be projected into the middle of a room as a “cloud” that can be enjoyed from every angle without 3-D glasses.

It may even be possible to broadcast concerts in other arenas around the world and to view live, lifesize sporting events in stadiums thousands of miles from the real players.

Holographic enthusiasts have named it the “Stars Wars technology”, after a scene in the 1977 blockbuster where a holographic image of Princess Leia is briefly projected from the robot R2-D2 pleading: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

NHK, the Japanese equivalent of the BBC, has committed to creating the first holo-TV within six years.

It is sponsoring research at giant Japanese companies such as Sony and Mitsubishi and has dispatched engineers to America, where scientists have already generated basic holographic transmissions.

The University of Arizona recently announced it had used lasers and powerful computers to generate single-coloured clouds of images. Nasser Peyghambarian, professor of optical sciences at the university, said adding colour and fluid movement was “closer than ever”.

NHK has earmarked £2.8 billion for developing holo-TVs, as part of Japan’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup in Tokyo, but hopes to have prototypes working much earlier.

Jun Murai, a scientist known as “the father of the Japanese internet”, is advising NHK. Using holographic broadcasting over satellites, he said, football games in Tokyo could be relayed to a London stadium where full-sized players would appear so life-like that fans would believe they were at the match.

Holo-TVs would not have to be mounted on walls. Last week, a Sony engineer said they would more likely resemble a large book laid on the floor. Lasers would then project the cloud into the middle of the room.

“With wires running under the carpet, you could fill the room with a football match or Hollywood heroes leaping between your sofas,” said the engineer.

Alice's very weird wonderland

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1252091/Alices-weird-wonderland-Why-scenes-row-Tim-Burtons-fantastical-film-disappear-cinemas-fast-Cheshire-Cat.html

Alice's very weird wonderland: Why a behind-the-scenes row might see Tim Burton's most fantastical film yet disappear from cinemas as fast as the Cheshire Cat

By Alison Boshoff

20th February 2010

The word is that watching Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland is the closest you can come to falling down the rabbit hole yourself and into Lewis Carroll's fantasy world.

Those who have seen the film, or clips of it, say that it is utterly breathtaking, a hallucinatory alternate universe completely realised in every detail, from the sun streaming in through the gills of the mushrooms to the light falling on the individual fuzzy hairs on the caterpillar's back.

It cost £158million to make and, with computer graphics mixed with live action and animation, it is more technically ambitious than anything Burton has done before. And it is in 3-D, putting it head-to-head with the sci-fi phenomenon that is Avatar.

But far more significantly, it is said to be simply Burton's most beautiful and most perfectly imagined fantasy world.

The casting also has critical expectations rising. Who else but Matt Lucas could play the twin grotesques of Tweedledum and Tweedledee? And Johnny Depp, with green fluorescent contact lenses, rouged cheeks and a frizzy orange wig, makes the most extraordinary Mad Hatter.

With typical attention to detail, Burton has enhanced Depp's eyes with camera trickery, making them 15 per cent larger; so it's still Johnny Depp, but Through The Looking-Glass.

Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood has created a look for Depp which sees his clothes change colour as his moods come and go. He is like a human mood ring, hung with ribbons and hatpins and thimbles which dangle from his fingertips.

The Cheshire Cat, who can appear and disappear at will and has what Burton calls a creepy quality, is voiced by Stephen Fry and taps into Burton's hatred of cats.

Michael Sheen voices the White Rabbit, Alan Rickman is the caterpillar and Barbara Windsor the dormouse, Christopher Lee surfaces as the monstrous Jabberwock, Timothy Spall is a lugubrious bloodhound, Frances de la Tour is Alice's Aunt Imogene, Michael Gough the Dodo and Paul Whitehouse the March Hare.

Burton's partner, Helena Bonham Carter, plays the Queen of Hearts as the acme of royal rage, with a plucked hairline, red wig, geisha-white face and uncontrollable 'Off with her head!' aggression.

On screen, her head has been enlarged to three times its size and the end result is quite grotesque. 'I can't rely on Tim to make me pretty,' sighs Helena.

Alice In Wonderland - created in the 1860s by Charles Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll - is surely the literary masterpiece which Burton was born to interpret.

He has even worked in the studio once used by the English illustrator Arthur Rackham, whose illustrations for the 1907 edition ' produced the most iconic pictures of Alice that anyone has ever seen'.

'I read the Alice stories when I was eight, and I've seen the various TV and cinema versions, including the 1951 Disney cartoon. But, to be honest, I've never liked any of them,' Burton says.

'There was always a silly girl wandering around from one crazy character to another, and I never felt a real emotional connection to that, so it was an attempt to try and give it some framework and emotional grounding that I felt I hadn't seen in any version before.

'I think all of those characters serve to indicate some type of mental weirdness that everybody goes through.'
Burton says he wanted an Alice 'with gravity' rather than the usual little girl skipping through the grass in her white socks and a blue pinafore dress.

Eventually, he settled on Mia Wasikowska, a young Australian actress. 'She had that emotional toughness; standing her ground in a way which makes her kind of an older person but with a younger person's mentality,' the director says.

Having previously portrayed the equally weird and wonderful Edward Scissorhands and Willy Wonka for Burton, Johnny Depp was a shoo-in for the Mad Hatter.

'I read the Lewis Carroll stories over and over again, and I learned everything I could about Victorian times,' Depp says.

'It would have been too easy, and not very believable, to have played the Mad Hatter as just a straightforward crazy guy.

'But I knew Tim would be wanting more than that - there had to be a reason why he was like that, because something had tipped him over the edge.'

Depp's research revealed that the term 'mad as a hatter' came from a truth - that hatters in Victorian times suffered from mercury poisoning, a side-effect of the hat- manufacturing process which would affect the mind.

'So now we knew why he's mad, and after that, anything went,' Depp says.

'The mercury would have also shown through his skin and his hair, so the Hatter would have looked as mad as he behaved.'

For screenwriter Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty And The Beast), the positive early reaction has been a vindication of her vision.

'I wasn't trying to re-tell the old story; I was toying with the thought: what if Alice was older and she went back into Wonderland?

'I had this mental picture of her standing at a very crucial moment in her life and having to make an important decision, but being distracted by the White Rabbit.'

In the film, Alice's turning point comes as she receives an unexpected and unwelcome very public marriage proposal in a Victorian garden.

Seeing the White Rabbit - with his trademark waistcoat and watch, of course - she runs after him, stumbles and falls down a hole into Wonderland, which is in decline, overgrown and rather haunted.

She is taken to the hookah-smoking caterpillar, who tells her that according to ancient prophecy, she has returned to slay the Red Queen's dreaded Jabberwock and bring about the end of her reign.

'There's a lot that Lewis Carroll didn't write, but I've based other scenes on things he did', Woolverton says.

'It will infuriate the purists, but this was never meant to be a remake. This is Alice as a young woman.' \

But despite all this nurturing of Burton's vision, his movie is under threat of being smothered at birth. Quite extraordinarily, the UK's three largest cinema chains - Odeon, Vue and Cineworld - are threatening not to show it.

They account for 65 per cent of the UK's cinemas, and 90 per cent of the 3-D screens, so the threat is a serious one.

Given that the premiere is next Thursday and the movie opens on March 5, it's a disaster.

The cause of the angst is that Disney wants to release the film on DVD and Blu-ray only three months after it opens at the cinema, rather than the standard 17 weeks.

It wants to get the DVD into the shops before the midsummer doldrums, and to capitalise on the marketing of the movie while it is still fresh in people's minds.

But the cinemas are afraid that people will just wait to buy the film on DVD rather than spend money on going to the pictures. They aren't alone: four big cinema chains in Holland are boycotting the film and the Italians are rebelling, too.

Disney, which stands to lose upwards of £40million because of this row, says that 97 per cent of box office takings happen within eight weeks, and argues that it is only asking for this flexibility in the case of perhaps two movies a year.

Last week the company sent two executives from Hollywood to try to find a solution.

Burton himself transferred filming from Cornwall, where a lot of exterior scenes were shot, to Los Angeles, where the technology would be brought into play. Scenes were filmed in front of all-green backgrounds which were then overlaid digitally.

'The novelty of the green wears off very quickly,' Depp complained during filming. 'It's exhausting actually - we can't see what we are doing.'

Burton had lavender lenses fitted into his glasses to counter-balance the colour. This way of working brought the director great freedoms, particularly when it came to playing with scale.

Glover's Knave Of Hearts is half real, half digital. In the film he is 71/2ft tall, so on set Glover wore a green suit and a pair of green stilts. For the final film, his entire body, costume and cape were computer-generated - only his face was real.

Depp is lost in admiration for Burton. He says: 'He couldn't have bitten off anything bigger to chew. This is almost lunatic time. To choose to grab Alice In Wonderland, that in itself is one thing, and then to do it to the Tim Burton level is madness.'

Burton, stuck between a rock and a hard place over the distribution row, is keeping his own counsel. But there is no doubt he will be deeply disappointed if the film over which he has taken such care is available to only a fraction of its potential audience.

As he says: 'When Lewis Carroll wrote his Alice stories nearly 150 years ago, he was taking a big chance that people would understand and appreciate that he was trying to do something unusual.

'Now, it's our turn to take our own chances - and I don't think we've let him down.'

• Alice In Wonderland has its charity premiere in London next Thursday and is released on March 5.

'Monsters vs. Aliens' buzz gives boost to 3D

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/27/3d.monstersvsaliens/

'Monsters vs. Aliens' buzz gives boost to 3D revolution
Story Highlights
Buzz around "Monsters vs. Aliens" adds new momentum to drive for fully 3D industry
Economic slowdown affected introduction of 3D screens and projectors in cinemas
Other 3D films, like James Cameron's sci-fi "Avatar," slated for 2009 release
British film critic, Nick De Semlyen on 3D: "It's a revolution"
By Neil Curry
3-27-9

DreamWorks Animation's 3D movie, "Monsters vs. Aliens" should give Hollywood's new medium of choice a welcome boost in tough economic times.

It is a welcome boost to the 3D schedule: The introduction of special screens and digital projectors into cinemas across the world has have slowed in the last six months along with the economy.

Instead of the 5,000 3D screens expected to roll out, the figure is closer to 2,000, as the cost of installing new technology during the downturn causes pause for thought.

The release of "Monsters vs. Aliens," along with the recent announcement that Pixar 3D animation, "Up" will open the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in May, should give Hollywood's new medium of choice a lift.

"Monsters vs. Aliens," which U.S. movie industry bible, Variety describes as "'Monsters, Inc.' Meets 'War of the Worlds'" features a fight between a collection of well-loved movie monsters ( think 1950s B-movie characters like a 50 ft woman, a friendly amorphous blob, and a genius cockroach scientist) and alien invaders who want to take over Earth.

The brains behind the feature -- which has an all-star cast including Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland -- are Rob Letterman, the writer-director of Will Smith animated pic, "Shark Tale" and Conrad Vernon, the director of "Shrek 2."

The film is one of a number of 3D films, like James Cameron's sci-fi "Avatar," already in production that are slated for 2009 and 2010 release.

Of course, 3D is not new: Films like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "It Came from Outer Space" first emerged during the affluent years of the 1950s, but because 3D was quite gimmicky the medium fell into decline and exhibitors turned their attention to other technologies.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" is one of the new breed of 3D movies, projected digitally and very immersive for audiences, that Hollywood is hoping will lure paying audiences out of the comfort of their living rooms and back into cinemas.

"Hollywood is throwing themselves into 3D like never before," said Nick De Semlyen, critic for British movie magazine, Empire.

"All the big directors from Spielberg to Peter Jackson from 'Lord of the Rings,' they are making 3D films and it's looking like pretty much every big film is going to be in 3D in the next couple years ... It's a huge thing, it's a revolution."

"Monsters vs. Aliens" is the first film that DreamWorks Animation, the Hollywood giant behind movies like the "Shrek" franchise, "Madagascar" and last year's "Kung Fu Panda," has designed from scratch as a purely 3D movie.

Dennis Laws is Chief Projectionist at the BFI IMAX, which is home to the UK's biggest cinema screen and also has 3D capability. He told CNN, "It's the first film from DreamWorks that was designed from the very beginning to be in 3D and DreamWorks are very proud of the fact."

DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is probably 3D's most devoted advocate. He has said that the medium's introduction may be as significant to the movies as sound, and that all DreamWorks animations will be made in 3D from now on.

"Mr Katzenberg was so articulate in explaining what he wanted to do, and it was very different than anything that I had ever heard of before, which was 3-D used as a gimmick in a film," Keifer Sutherland told CNN at the UK premiere of "Monsters vs. Aliens." Watch Kiefer Sutherland talking about "Monsters vs. Aliens"

"He actually wanted to envelope the audience in the movie and make you feel like you were part of the scene.

"That not only knocks down the fourth wall between the movie and the audience but it also furthers telling the story."

With commercial 3D still in its infancy, all eyes are on each new release to take in the advances in the technology, which is moving forward very quickly.

"The technology is growing really fast," De Semlyen told CNN, "It's very exciting."

Mairi Mackay contributed to this story.

3-D is the next generation in the movie industry

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-03-13-showest-3D_N.htm

ShoWest report: 3-D is the next generation in the movie industry
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
03-13-08

LAS VEGAS — For all the celebrities who paraded through ShoWest this week, the star who had theater owners chattering like high school children was a 15-year-old girl who didn't even set foot on the convention floor.

Hannah Montana ruled this year's conference. Or at least her movie did.

When the digitally shot, three-dimensional film Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert raked in $31 million on its opening weekend last month, it served as both wake up and warning for the owners of the nation's 6,000 theaters, which are about to undergo the most expensive and risky makeover since movies went to sound or color.

In their most audacious attempt yet to get people from behind their computer screens and television sets, studios and theater owners are going digital. That means they will be handing out 3-D glasses. They will be showing the Super Bowl and U2 concerts on their best 60-foot screens. They will play commercial movies in IMAX.

They'll be trying to make your $10,000 home theater look antiquated and quaint.

They will also charge more at the ticket booth.

If Hollywood and the Motion Picture Association of America get their wish and see half of the country's 42,000 movie screens converted to digital within the next three years, it could cost studios and theater owners upwards of $1 billion. And there's no guarantee it will revive an industry that hasn't seen an attendance increase in the past three years.

But that won't stop studios from trying. Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D, due July 11, will be the first live-action film shot and released entirely in 3-D. July 18's Batman sequel The Dark Knight has four key scenes shot in IMAX. And Monsters vs. Aliens hits screens March 27, 2009, as the first computer-generated animated movie created in 3-D.

That's the tip of the digital berg. At least 20 3-D and IMAX movies are headed to theaters over the next two years, from the epic (Avatar, James Cameron's digitally rendered sci-fi thriller) to the literally pedestrian (Step Up 3-D).

"I know it sounds strange coming from a guy who made independent movies early on, but for some movies, bigger is better," says Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan. "You have to stay ahead of what people have available to them at home, which is quite a lot. We have to offer more."

Upsides and downsides

But is it enough? Some theater owners worry that once they surrender their canisters of film, they will be at the mercy of technology that, like digital cameras and computers, keeps surging in capability and requires repeated investment.

Still, owners and studio executives agree that digital has distinct advantages over film:

•Image quality. Since pictures are digitally encoded, there's no degradation of image like you get on film. Think DVD over VHS.

•Flexibility. Digital movies can not only be swapped out simply by switching hard drives; they can be transmitted like cable TV, allowing theaters to carry live sporting and entertainment events.

•3-D. Digital projectors will allow more filmmakers to make three-dimensional films that are worlds beyond the 1950s 3-D craze, notable for its gimmicky paper glasses and titles such as Cat Women of the Moon and Gorilla at Large.

But some theater owners see sizable downsides to a digital world, some of which they fear will have the opposite effect they're hoping for.

•Increased ticket prices. Generally, 3-D, IMAX and special presentations such as concerts cost anywhere from $3 to $10 more a ticket. And with the average ticket price nearing $7, owners worry that breaking the $10 barrier will lose customers permanently.

•Technical challenges. "When a movie breaks, we can splice it together in about three minutes," says Leonard Binning, who owns a seven-screen theater in Alberta, Canada. "How many times does your computer freeze at work? Can you imagine a theater full of people, the network goes down, and you're looking for a tech guy?"

•Piracy. Because of its pristine image, a digital movie is ripe for theft. Even a camcorder recorder of a digital movie would be more valuable on the street than a duplicate of celluloid.

Still, Hollywood executives are not above doomsday predictions if theaters don't modernize quickly.

"Over the last 40 years, our population has grown by 120 million people," says Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks' animation chief. "But attendance remains flat. We are in a declining business. If we don't do something to reinvent ourselves, we are going to be in serious trouble down the road."

Hard to judge by the numbers

Change won't come cheap. Though studios and financiers are underwriting costs for many theater owners, the typical digital projector costs $75,000.

"This isn't a gimmick," says Nancy Fares, manager for Texas Instrument's Digital Light Projections group, which has sold about 4,000 projectors to theaters nationwide. For 3-D, she says, "people wear high-tech plastic glasses, usually that they can take home. They become immersed in the movie. It makes movies more of an event."

Audience responses have been inconclusive. Last year's $150 million animated tale Beowulf did $83 million in the United States, but another $114 million overseas. Hannah Montana did more than $63 million on about 850 screens — virtually every one that has digital projectors — for a robust per-theater average.

"If we could have put it on 3,000 screens, we would have," says Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney, which released the film. "We were limited only by the number of theaters that were digital. But that movie proved 3-D is viable. It's the real deal."

But some exhibitors wonder whether audiences can tell the difference in digital images the way they can in, say, digital sound.

"I did an experiment," says Mark O'Meara, president of University Mall Theatres in Fairfax, Va. "I installed digital sound while the same movie was playing for a few weeks. The first week without the new sound, people didn't say much about it. After the new sound system, people were raving about the movie. I know image quality is important, but there are other things that make a big difference, too. And they're not as expensive."

Binning says that, ultimately, he'll purchase the new projectors. "You have to keep up with technology if you want to put (butts) in the seats, because they expect the best," he says.

But first, he'll hire more ushers.

"We shouldn't let all this digital talk overshadow other things," he says. "I need more people monitoring who is being rude before I invest in a high-tech projector. A better picture is great, but it isn't going to make a difference if people are talking loudly, kicking the back of your seat and texting all night. We still need to concentrate on improving the overall movie experience."