July
14
How Journey to the Center of the Earth Got Its Title
[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Contrary to reports in the LAT and NYT, it was not an unanticipated shortage of 3-D screens that forced Warner Bros. and the producers of Journey of the Center of the Earth to change the film's title, which was supposed to be Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D.
It is true that digital 3-D deployment has been slower than predicted and there aren't yet enough digital 3-D screens to support a tentpole-sized wide release. However, Journey director Eric Brevig told Variety: "We knew that two years ago. It's not a mystery to look at the number of projectors being installed and the number of 3-D screens."
Brevig continues: "We didn’t want the '3-D' on the title because the movie is going to play on DVD and in airplanes and everywhere in 2-D." Producer Charlotte Huggins, a leading proponent of 3-D, also argued from the start that audiences would be confused and upset if they bought tickets to a movie with "3-D" in the title and wound up sitting through a regular 2-D showing.
The problem was, Twentieth Century Fox had control of the title Journey to the Center of the Earth and was unwilling to give it up to New Line. By appending "3-D" to the end, New Line could avoid that legal hurdle.
So why did Fox change its mind? It's no secret that digital 3-D is in its infancy: the digital 3-D filmmaking community is small and close-knit. They all know that what affects one 3-D release affects all that follow. Fox has its own very expensive live-action 3-D tentpole coming: James Cameron's Avatar. So Fox has an interest in making sure the 3-D brand isn't sullied in the 18 months before that epic unspools.
We hear that as the conversation escalated at Fox, someone proposed that part of the Journey release be in anaglyph 3-D, using film projectors and the old-style red-and-green glasses, but everyone agreed that was bad for the new digital 3-D brand. Eventually everyone agreed it would also be bad for the 3-D brand -- and, by extension, for Avatar -- if thousands of moviegoers came out of Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D wondering why they just saw a 2-D movie. Eventually the discussion escalated to the highest levels of the studio, where Fox toppers relented and let New Line and Warner Bros. use the title they had always wanted.
In the end, said Brevig, Fox toppers had only one caveat for the Journey filmmakers: "Just make sure it’s good-looking 3-D."
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Personally, when I see "3-D" in a title, I immediately run the other way.
But I am not representative of the filmgoing public, I guess.
Posted by: Liz | July 14, 2008 at 09:17 PM