Behold the performance of Beowulf!
Well, how amazing is that? Beowulf comes out and does $28.1M on its opening weekend. What’s even more impressive is that the Imax® 3D version contributed $3.6M of that, or 13%, this according to the usual entities that track these figures (the Wall Street Journal reported). Regardless of where you sit on the “Is 3D a fad or is it here to stay” debate, what is not debatable is the revenue generator that 3D can be. For example, “Chicken Little” (2005) did 2.5X the box office than that of the 2D version.
And what does that mean for technology adoption and transition? Digital cinemas, digital projectors, digital cinema mastering and, yep, you guessed it, eventually those files aren’t going to be delivered on a set of redundant disk platters, but will be electronically delivered. The digital cinema supply chain issue is rapidly approaching and will require solutions for the managed movement of content. It will be necessary to administrate the clean-up and maintenance of those drives (ahem…perhaps I should say: solid state…); the transmission will have to be secured; there will be strict verification that the content arrived, and, ultimately, the content will need to be deleted. All automatically, according to contractually mandated schedules.
We’re getting there…break out the 3D glasses and look behind you. There ain’t no film up there, Ma…!