Jeffrey Katzenberg may be the Moses trying to lead the industry to the Promised 3D Digital Land, but judging by this article from the LA Times (Jeffrey Katzenberg in 3-D: Hollywood is rolling its eyes), his leadership may be in question. Patrick Goldstein, the articles author, takes Katzenberg to task for a number of recent events, ranging from the DreamWorks-Disney deal to the issue surrounding the closure of the the hospital and long-term care facility at its Woodland Hills retirement home, for which Katzenberg was the chief fundraiser.
But the article hangs the biggest question mark over the DreamWorks Animation’s head honcho’s strategy when it comes to Digital 3D and the studio’s imminent release:
Katzenberg’s biggest P.T. Barnum stunt of all — spending a reported $9 million to wow Super Bowl viewers with a 3-D ad for DreamWorks’ upcoming “Monsters vs. Aliens” 3-D film — was a fiasco, creating a backlash against Katzenberg’s own very public 3-D crusade. The blogosphere was full of mockery of the stunt. As SpoutBlog put it in a recent post: “Katzenberg may have done irreversible damage” by attempting to advertise “Monsters vs. Aliens” “by way of an anaglyphic 3D Super Bowl commercial necessitating outdated red/blue glasses.” To say that the ad missed its target audience would be an understatement. When Cinematical did a poll asking for reaction to the ad, the biggest segment of voters — 41% — checked the box saying: “I never picked up the glasses to begin with.”
The reaction was so bad that the chief executive of RealD Cinema, the company that does the projection technology used on a number of 3-D films, including “Monsters vs. Aliens,” had to issue a statement distancing his company from the Super Bowl ad, saying: “It’s important to recognize that today’s RealD in theaters is a quantum leap better than what they saw on TV.”
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It was a battle of the titans at the box office that was destined not to be. Paramount and DreamsWorks Animation (DWA) have moved the release date of ‘
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