A good part of The Polar Express’ box office success came from its consistently impressive performance on IMAX 3D. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

3D is definitely back— but we’re not talking about House of Wax (the Vincent Price original, not the recent remake with Paris Hilton) or Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. No, when The Polar Express IMAX 3D grosses $45 million in 83 theaters, amassing nearly a quarter of the domestic take, and when George Lucas shows up at ShoWest to preach the 3D gospel with Robert Zemeckis (Polar Express), James Cameron (who plans on shooting his next feature, Battle Angel, in the stereoscopic format) and Robert Rodriguez (whose second foray, The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D, opens June 10), and to announce that the entire Star Wars franchise will be reissued in 3D beginning in 2007, you realize that this is no gimmick. The 3D revival currently underway is a real business, with definite ramifications for our industry.

“When you see some of this test footage, it’s shockingly good, and you can see how people would want to go see it,” Lucas said at ShoWest last month. “It means we can repurpose a lot of old movies, and at the same time it really gives a whole new dimension to the movies we’re making now.”

“It’s not just the use of digital projection, which we all know is on the horizon,” added Peter Jackson in a pre-taped session, who reportedly has installed a 3D master suite in his production offices in New Zealand. “But that the particular technology can be used to create three-dimensional movies that go far beyond the quality and the spectacle of anything we’ve ever seen before. Forget the old days of wearing the red and blue glasses and the eyestrain. All of that is behind us now. These new active glasses that you’re wearing and seeing 3D with are a breakthrough in technology.”

ShoWest attendees were treated to test footage of Attack of the Clones, Lilo & Stitch and Top Gun “dimensionalized” by In-Three Inc. of Agoura, California, and projected by a single Texas Instruments DLP-based 2K D-Cinema projector from Christie and fed from a single dual-stream server from QuVis. The other related news at ShoWest was that Mann Theatres signed an agreement with REAL D to exhibit digital 3D, with the famous Hollywood Chinese serving as the flagship theater. The system would utilize a single digital projector and lightweight “sunglasses.”

Spectacle kings George Lucas and James Cameron are two of the biggest backers of the reemergence of 3D. Photo credit: Sarah Baisley.

“I think what’s about to happen is considerably different [from the ‘50s 3D fad], suggests Michael Kaye, president and ceo of In-Three. “This is not gimmicky. We wanted to produce a system that converts the movie in high quality, which is what we achieved. It’s the only reason we can attract the likes of Lucas or Cameron or Spielberg or anyone. We’ve developed our own hardware and software for 2D to 3D conversion for digital cinema intentionally under the radar. We started working with studios doing tests. It was a bit of an uphill battle getting in there, falling in the wake of failed attempts, until they actually saw what we did and how different it was. One studio led to another. When we finally got it in front of Lucas, he was all over it. He watched Episode I and II in a screening room and said, ‘I’m sold, I’m sold.’

“Then we set him up with his own system and glasses up north, and he showed all of his film buddies. We got calls from a lot of studio people to see demos. Then Spielberg and Katzenberg and Cruise called. So we’ve been in front of every studio over the last two years. It’s been good, it’s been fun; now we have our work ahead of us with an expansion program.”

The Dimensionalization system operates on In-Three custom designed workstations running hardware and software designed by its development team. The process is roughly analogous to the post-production techniques used in the creation of 3D graphics, animation and vfx. Operators create 3D versions of scenes utilizing a wide variety of proprietary software tools, many of which are automated and computer-optimized algorithms at their disposal.

According to insiders, 3D might be just the catalyst to convince exhibitors to jump on the stalled digital cinema bandwagon, along with offering a way to combat piracy since it’s so difficult to recreate the immersive 3D experience.