Fox Refuses To Supply Movie Theaters with 3-D Glasses

by: Hilary Lewis

On Tuesday, Fox said that it wasn't going to pay the $1-million-per-movie cost to supply theaters with 3-D glasses for the studio's upcoming in-your-face films like this summer's Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Instead, Fox wants the movie theaters to pay for them. Understandably, multiplex owners aren't too happy about the extra cost, and many are considering revolting by only showing Ice Age 3 in 2-D, which could massively cut into the film's box-office revenues.

Regal Cinemas, the nation's largest theater chain, has reportedly already decided to only show Ice Age 3 in 2-D, sources close to the company tell Entertainment Weekly. Two sources also believe AMC Theaters and Cinemark will oppose Fox's demands, Entertainment Weekly reports:

Evidently, the glasses were part of a deal worked out long ago, when theater chains started installing the silver screens and digital projectors needed to view 3-D digital cinema, so to go back now and renegotiate after the equipment has been put in place is a difficult proposition.

One anonymous exhibitor outlined the reasons for his ire to the mag:

"I'm already paying fees to RealD for the systems. I'm paying to put in the silver screens and I'm paying to train employees to run the product. To come in at this point and say they aren't going to pay for the glasses, yet they want all the upside of the revenue, is ridiculous."

Sadly, both the theaters and the studios are paying hefty sums to usher in this 3-D revolution, with the budget on Fox's upcoming live-action 3-D pic Avatar already reported to be north of $200 million. So, it's no surprise each side wants the other one to foot the bill. While we're not surprised that cost-centric Fox, still recovering from a rough year at the box office in 2008, doesn't want to put up the dough, if this is what it takes to get the additional revenues that 3-D movies provide, Fox may have to give in. After all, that Avatar budget won't be easy to recoup.

For its part, Fox, via distribution president Bruce Snyder, denied that there was any problem. "No exhibitor has said they don't want to play Ice Age in 3-D," Snyder told EW. "All we are doing is working out the issues."

Coming Soon: The Hulufication of YouTube?

by Adam Ostrow

YouTube has been moving to bring in legitimate, licensed content from TV networks and movie studios for some time, inking deals with the likes of CBS and MGM, among others. Now, that professionally produced content is going to become the focal point of the site, as GoogleGoogle reviews plans to launch a major redesign within the next month.

According to ClickZ, YouTube’s main navigation will soon be switched to “Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos. The first three tabs will display premium shows, clips, and movies from Google’s network and studio partners, all of which will be monetized with in-stream advertising.”

Meanwhile, the user-generated content that was the original premise for the site will be relegated to the “Videos” tab. This new navigation makes YouTube considerably more like HuluHulu reviews, who offers two main options in its navigation – TV and Movies – from the video site’s parent companies: NBC and News Corp.

Why would YouTubeYouTube reviews want to emulate Hulu, which, though relatively popular, is still just a fraction of the size of YouTube? The main reason is that YouTube has been somewhat infamously unable to generate much money considering the size of its audience, whereas Hulu is able to attract high-end advertisers both because of its agency ties and its lack of more difficult to monetize user-generated content.

While I understand why Google might want to effectively “hide” user-generated videos from a business perspective, at the moment, it’s going to make the site a lot less engaging for users, simply because of the lack of quality pro content hosted on YouTube. Other than music videos, YouTube’s content catalog lags well behind that of its peers (I recently called it the TBS of online video). Unless deals are reached to bring its content catalog up to par – and these too are rumored – launching the said redesign would seem to be a mistake by YouTube.

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