I finally saw Avatar this week. I thought I’d be one of the last to see it, but after a couple of weeks the huge IMAX theatre was still filled all the way. First about the movie. I’d never seen a movie in IMAX and also not with this kind of 3D technology. I was pretty impressed by it all, but I think the movie itself would have been great without all the effects. In advance I thought it would’ve been more of a tech demo showing off the 3D possibilities, without any real story. While that surely wasn’t true, I’d expect many of the people that were going to see the movie were going for the 3D experience.
And boy, were there many people who went and saw it. It’s a regular box office success. It grossed over $1 billion worldwide in the first month and people have paid $1.6 bln up until today to get in. To put that in perspective, it’s the number two in the list with highest grossing movies ever, behind James Cameron’s previous movie, Titanic, which was released 12 years ago and has turned over $1.8 bln. Another interesting statistic is that the whole of the movie industry has resulted in about $10.5 bln in 2009. So Avatar (released December 19th) makes up almost 10% of that. (source Boxofficemojo)
James Cameron has been developing this movie for 12 years. In this period he has seen the movie industry changing and struggling with internet phenomena such as piracy. The revenues have been steadily rising, but still people worried. Then he and others wondered how to get people away from their computer screens and living rooms, into the movie theatres. 3D movies seemed like the answer and heavy investments were made in developing a whole new way of filming. Would these investments have been made if the threat of people watching movies at home hadn’t existed? I doubt it.
Now of course one of the biggest hits of the Consumer Electronics Show of this January in Las Vegas was the 3D television, so people can watch 3D movies at home. No doubt 3D movies will get pirated. This doesn’t mean this development has been for nothing. It’s just another step in innovative progress.
