The coming 3-D revolution in movies

Fox’s Gianopulos says his studio hasn’t yet set a template for deciding which films should be in 3-D, though clearly, certain movies lend themselves more readily to the process. Doing a movie like Sideways in 3-D wouldn’t offer “the same benefit as when you have a banshee flying across a canyon,” he says. But eventually, he says he believes 3-D will become the standard.

Chris Aronson, a senior vice president at Fox, says one of the revelations of Avatar was that 3-D is a technique separate from the lavish computer-generated imagery. “To me, the live-action part of Avatar was equally remarkable” as the computer-generated world of Pandora, he says. “We’ve always joked about, ‘Would you want to see My Dinner with Andre in 3-D?’ Well, actually, yeah.” The technique isn’t just about creating extraordinary worlds, he says, but about having movies appear “as though you’re looking through a window.”