Technicolor expands film-based 3-D business

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Looking to take advantage of the glut of 3-D movies and the lack of screens equipped to play them, French-owned Technicolor is carving out some business by offering a low-cost alternative to smaller theater owners that don’t want to be left out of the 3-D gold rush.

Technicolor, the giant film processing and digital media company, announced this week at the movie industry’s annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas that it has secured agreements with more than a dozen independent theaters, including New York City-based Bow Tie Cinemas, to install its 3-D systems on more than 150 screens in North America.

Currently, there are only about 3,500 3-D screens in the U.S. and Canada, less than 10% of all screens. Although JP Morgan Chase recently secured $660 million in financing for the nation’s three biggest theater operators to add 12,000 digital screens, many of which will be converted to 3-D, it will be months before those screens are added.

However, that cash is not available to the smaller independent and regional players, most of which can’t afford to spring $75,000 on a new digital projector, typically required for 3-D viewing.

Seeking to exploit an untapped market, Technicolor is marketing a film-based system that uses a split lens to project 3-D images on a traditional film projector. Exhibitors pay a flat fee of $2,000 for each 3-D film (capped at $12,000 per year).

‘Technicolor 3-D offers exhibitors a high-quality solution at a low cost of entry, and helps get the industry past the current shortage of 3-D screens,’’ Joe Berchtold, president of the company’s creative services business, said in a statement.

Still, support for the system has been mixed among the major studios, some of which believe it is inferior to digital 3-D. Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks Animation have endorsed the system, but three other studios have not: Walt Disney Studios, the company behind the hit 3-D film ‘Alice in Wonderland’; Twentieth Century Fox, which released James Cameron’s 3-D blockbuster ‘Avatar’; and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

-- Richard Verrier