expenditures

DreamWorks Spends Big Bucks on Dicey Monsters vs. Aliens 3-D Stunt

Feeling increasingly desperate about the way that the combination of high-tech home-entertainment options and the craptastic economy has forced Joe Moviegoer into becoming a home-dwelling hermit addicted to video games and HDTV, movie-theater owners and studios have been working overtime to sell theatergoers on the pants-shitting awesomeness of the in-theater 3-D viewing experience. But just when you were ready to once again shell out $4.50 for a watered-down Diet Coke comes news that the intrepid television makers are working overtime to bring 3-D to your living room, once again thumbing their noses at the multiplex owners. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Panasonic, Samsung, and Texas Instruments are all debuting new sets with technology capable of delivering crisp 3-D images. These sets won’t be available to purchase for a few years, but that’s not stopping DreamWorks from spending “tens of millions of dollars” (!) to produce and distribute special 3-D glasses as part of an elaborate Super Bowl Sunday promotional scheme for Monsters vs. Aliens.

The trailer for the March release of Monsters vs. Aliens, which will be paired along with a new 3-D ad for the “ultra-hip SoBe lizards,” will be the first movie commercial ever to air on network television in 3-D. To ensure as many people as possible experience the commercial in the new way, more than 125 million pairs of these special, new “polarized” glasses — not the old-school red and blue framed bad boys you remember from your youth — will be distributed at grocery stores and retailers and can also be used to take in a special 3-D episode of Chuck on the increasingly stunt-filled NBC network the next night. If you were to ask us, we could probably find better ways for DreamWorks to spend “tens of millions of dollars” to promote this film, especially considering that most of the people who will be watching the Super Bowl will be seeing double anyway. But no matter how this stunt goes, please, Ben Silverman, we beg of you: Don’t go getting any bright ideas about broadcasting Celebrity Apprentice in 3-D.

DreamWorks to hand out 150 million 3D glasses for Super Bowl ad [CBC]

DreamWorks Spends Big Bucks on Dicey Monsters vs. Aliens 3-D Stunt