Are Consumers Tiring of 3D movies?
A quick note by Philip Lelyveld
There have been a number of stories in the last few days (actually multiple versions of the same story) about the decline of North American moviegoer interest in seeing movies in 3D. The rest of the world still trends toward the 3D version over the 2D version when they have the choice.
Here is the raw data that some of the early stories point to. (click on it to enlarge it)
The data reports various statistics for opening week (only) boxoffice. I have charted the raw data for the percentage of the boxoffice revenue from 3D tickets (blue line) and the percentage of multiplexes showing the movie on a 3D screen (red line). Note that because a multiplex can show the same movie on both a 3D and a 2D screen, it is possible for red to equal 100% yet blue be less than 100%.
The timeline on my chart runs from the opening week of Avatar through the opening week of Pirates 4.
You can see that there is tremendous variability in the data.
Early on people wanted to experience 3D and there weren't enough screens to meet demand (blue over red).
As more 3D screens were installed, the impact on the 3D screens has lessened (red over blue). It is clear that consumers are making a choice between seeing a movie in 3D or 2D. What isn't clear from the data is the reason.
The news stories interpret this flip as clear evidence of consumer pushback against 3D. While that is quite possibly one contributing factor, the decline observed in the stats is also no doubt due to audience preference for specific genres in 3D (ex. horror movies) that haven't opened in theatres recently, the high cost of taking a family to a 3D family movie due to the significant ticket upcharge, competition among movies in the multiplex that push people to see the movie on the 2nd weekend (these are only opening weekend stats), and many other factors.