WHILE movies change titles all the time -- Will Smith's "Hancock" used to be called "Tonight, He Comes" -- rarely does a name switch hint at a looming crisis for the film business at large. But that's exactly what's behind the changed title of "Journey to the Center of the Earth."
When the Brendan Fraser adventure film, which opens Friday, was first shown to theater owners at their annual ShoWest convention in March, the movie was called "Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D." The film's producers were confident back then that there could be as many as 1,400 North American theaters equipped to show "Journey" in its intended 3-D format by the film's premiere, so that the film's startling sea creatures (among other eye-popping effects) really would jump out of the water.
But as July approached, theater owners were converting their auditoriums to 3-D at a much slower pace than "Journey's" makers anticipated, meaning there would be only about 800 domestic theaters ready to show the film in 3-D. Warner Bros. (which recently absorbed "Journey" maker New Line Cinema) was forced not only to shorten the film's title by eliminating "3D," but also had to tweak its advertising campaign to make clear that many theaters -- about 2,000, in fact -- would be showing the movie in the traditional two-dimensional format.
"We all thought we'd get there sooner," Beau Flynn, one of "Journey's" producers, says of the rate of theater upgrades. "The conversion will happen, but it's slower than we thought it would be."
Behind the technology
At a time when the rest of the media world is transforming at light speed, movie exhibition is struggling to keep up, which may prove particularly problematic when it comes to 3-D filmmaking.
Several prominent live-action directors and movie studios -- "Titanic" director James Cameron, "Polar Express' " Robert Zemeckis, Disney, DreamWorks Animation and 20th Century Fox at the forefront -- are making huge bets on 3-D's potential. Within the next eight months, the first steady stream of 3-D movies will arrive at the multiplex, but there still might not be enough 3-D screens to show them, particularly if two 3-D movies open simultaneously.
"There needs to be a situation where two good 3-D movies can play at the same time," says Disney studio chief Dick Cook, whose Disney and Pixar labels have nine 3-D movies in the works, including Nov. 26's animated "Bolt" and a 2009 Jonas Bros. concert film. "Right now, that's not the case."
