Katzenberg on Warners' 'Clash of the Titans' cheesy 3-D: 'You just snookered the movie audience'

Everyone inside Hollywood has known for weeks that DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg has been furious with Warner Bros. for releasing "Clash of the Titans" just one week after the vocal 3-D proponent's "How to Train Your Dragon" -- and then adding insult to injury by giving "Titans" a cynical, quickie 3-D conversion to lure more 3-D zealots to the multiplexes.

But just how incensed is the Katz Man? Let's just say when Katzenberg sat down with the editors of Variety to discuss the future of 3-D, the gloves were off, with all of the jabs and punches being directed right at Warner Bros.

Katzenberg called the studio's attempt to pass off "Titans" as a genuine 3-D movie "disingenuous" while warning that if Warners or other studios release more dingy-looking 3-D conversions "we [will already have] killed the goose that is delivering us golden eggs." He even took direct aim on Warners studio chief Alan Horn, referring to Horn's well-known personal concern with keeping ultra-violence, cigarette smoking and Hummers out of his movies when he said: "Alan Horn has such a great conscience about things that go on in his movies ... he cares. What happened on 'Titans'?"

As Katzenberg sees it -- and I can't say that I disagree with him -- if you're going to demand that moviegoers pay an extra $5 to see a 3-D movie, it certainly ought to be real 3-D, not fake 3-D. Eventually the public will catch on to the hustle and revolt. Katzenberg made a persuasive case that there's a huge difference between movies that are, as he described it, "authored" in 3-D and movies that are converted in post-production. In fact, he said that what Warners did with "Clash of the Titans" was "analogous to taking a black and white film and colorizing it. It's technically possible to do, but it's not what the creators designed. And it doesn't look right."

He even defended Tim Burton's hybrid 3-D work on "Alice in Wonderland," saying that while the live-action  scenes were shot in 2-D, Burton specifically designed shots and sequences that, in post-production, could be amplified to "actually deliver a pretty high-end 3-D experience."

Katzenberg warned that a continuing stream of shoddy 3-D conversions would be a disaster for the emerging art form, arguing that "if we take the low road, we'll be out of the 3-D business in 12 months." He bluntly laid out his vision this way:

We've seen the highest end of [3-D] in "Avatar" and you have now witnessed the lowest end of it [in "Titans"]. You cannot do anything that is of a lower grade and a lower quality than what has just been done on "Clash of the Titans." It literally is "OK, congratulations! You just snookered the movie audience." The act of doing it was disingenuous. We may get away with it a few times but in the long run, [moviegoers] will wake up. And the day they wake up is the day they walk away from us and we blew it.

Katzenberg has his own biases, since his entire business model largely depends on the extra revenues that 3-D tickets will deliver. But as someone who only cares about the art of movies, not the cash on the barrelhead, I'm in his corner on this issue. Having seen "Avatar," I'm convinced that 3-D, in the hands of an ambitious filmmaker, can add an amazing new level of visual imagination to what has been a pretty stagnant art form. But if the studios are going to treat 3-D like a cash cow, audiences will quickly catch on. And as Katzenberg knows all too well, once burned is twice shy. As soon as moviegoers feel the stink of exploitation, they'll stay away in droves from all 3-D films, whether they're good, bad or just plug ugly. 

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JEFFREY KATZENBERG: THE JERRY FALWELL OF 3-D?

Photo of Jeffrey Katzenberg by Laurent Emmanuel / Associated Press

Comments

[DVS]

As an ex-employee of Warner Bros., as well as a big fan of their work, I have to say Mr. Katzenberg may be onto something here. I have to agree with his assessment that if the studios jump into the 3-D technology as simple a money-maker (the extra $5) then audiences will feel betrayed and like they've been had. I think Mr. Katzenberg would have lashed out whichever studio had done a sub-par version of a 3-D flick. In this case, it just happens to be Warner Bros. But in defense of WB, I haven't seen "Titans" yet, so I can't say the movie actually does suck at all. But he did say, regarding lower quality 3-D pictures: "we [will already have] killed the goose that is delivering us golden eggs.", so apparently he has no problem with the extra revenue his studio will charge, and in fact, seems to relish the thought of the extra dough.

[mindbender]

One important thing to remember is that Katzenberg makes animated movies where the cost of "authoring" in 3D is manageable because these movies are completely built in computers. For live-action films, the ones that would most benefit from shooting them in actual 3D are the big epic popcorn movies. Unfortunately, to "author" these types of movies in 3D is actually quite costly-- prohibitively so in most cases because of the complexity of production. So if what we're calling for here is to only "author" in 3D and avoid all conversions, then I think we're going to be limiting 3D movies to animated films and the occasional Jim Cameron film. How many filmmakers or studios can justify the $400m+ that Cameron spent to make AVATAR? Because that kind of money, coupled with a once-in-a-lifetime director in Jim Cameron, is what's necessary to deliver that level of 3D spectacle.

By the way, I think it's safe to say given the types of films that he makes, Katzenberg would prefer that Dreamworks, his competitors at Blue Sky and Pixar (and the occasional Jim Cameron film) are the only folks that make 3D movies. Keep it special-- as long as I'm one of the few that has access to the "special."

[Franco]

Katzy is protesting too much. MVA didn't need to be in 3D. I saw a screener of the movie before I saw the theater. The 3D was cute but wasn't necessary for the entire movie. OTOH, ALICE also didn't need to be in 3D and I'm glad we found a theater that offered a 7.50 matinee, with no 3D up-charge. CLASH was a fine enough popcorn movie, no worse than either TRANSFORMER and no one expected it to be THE HURT LOCKER or UP IN THE AIR. I saw the 2D version and don't really see that the entire movie needed a 3D conversion.

I do agree that movies should be shot in 3D - and not converted at the end. However, if the decision is made and shots are planned and designed to look good in both 2D and 3D, PLUS it can add to the experience, fine. But we don't need SHREK in 3D or any of the other crappy, smart alecky cartoons Katzy is about to shove down the viewing public choices.

The high prices will have as much to say about creating a 3D backlash - even for a movie that's enjoyable and popular like AVATAR.

[Alan Dean Foster]

I completely agree with Mr. Katzenberg that charging an extra $5 (or more) to see a film not originated or shot in 3-D counts as snookering the filmgoer.

What is not mentioned is that charging an extra $5 or more to see a film originated in 3-D amounts to exactly the same thing. The question is whether, and how soon, the general filmgoing audience is going to figure that out.

[John A. Rupkalvis]

There have been a lot of misunderstandings about the extra charge for 3-D films. A well designed 3-D film that is correctly produced should not cost much more than a comparable 2-D film; maybe 10% (or 15% if there are a lot of special visual effects). The purported purpose of this charge is to offset the very high cost of installing digital projection equipment in the theaters, which supposedly is necessary to show 3-D. In actuality there are other options that are much less expensive. For example, in the 1980's 3-D movies were shown without any extra charges. Those systems still exist, as well as comparable cost but highly improved film systems today. Thus, it should be possible to show 3-D at any theater that wants it, with little or no surcharge. Some of these film systems are equal to or superior to the extremely expensive digital systems in image quality, color quality, motion smoothness, and screen brightness.