70 mm Dune part two

[Bobby Henderson]

The individual driver boards in direct view LED screens have two major problems.

The front faces of the boards are solid plastic and have a bunch of small louvers separating each row of SMD LEDs. The louvers help improve contrast. The LEDs will have to be spaced pretty closely together to deliver 4K or higher resolution on a normal to large cinema screen. A 50' wide LED screen would need a pixel pitch of only 3.72mm to fit 4096 pixels across. The LEDs take up their own share of space. That leaves a tiny amount left over to make porous for audio to travel through.

Then there is all the other stuff mounted behind the faces of the LED boards. There are IC boards, fans, ribbon cables and other structural stuff. All of that stuff has to be miniaturized somehow in order to not block sound output from speaker drivers.

Even if a LED board maker such as Daktronics, Barco, etc can manage to create a LED display that allows audio to transmit through the screen the economics just aren't there to turn such a thing into a product line. That is if the product is to be sold primarily to cinemas. The ridiculously short theatrical window takes away so much earning power from movie theaters. These companies are already selling direct view LED screens for use in fancy hotel lobbies, trade show displays, corporate presentation rooms and very high end home theaters. They may do the same thing with a newer kind of LED cinema screen.

[Geoff Jones]

Here is an ironic possibility: since d-cinema technology is dependent on a larger mass-scale install base of theaters in order to make its computer chips and other components commercially viable I can easily imagine a situation where cinemas decline enough in number to where digital-based projection disappears and that the few remaining theaters are just showing film prints. They could film prints tattooed with time code to play a Dolby Atmos track or something. Still, the show would be on film.

Most theaters would continue to provide the shitty presentations they are offering today, but now with scratches!

Of course the other (more likely) outcome is the whole cinema platform just dies out and we're stuck watching movies only at home.

And then what?

Will Hollywood figure out how to make movies cheaply enough that the streaming model is sustainable? Will streaming prices rise? Will new releases recieve à la carte pricing?

Or maybe nothing will change. Many of their big movies are already unprofitiable on the big screen. Now they'll be unprofitable at home!

But...

Could a new exhibition industry eventually emerge?

What might that look like?

It couldn't be about simply putting movies in front of eyeballs, since streaming already delivers that. It would have to be about showmanship, about creating a magnificent immersive shared experience.

Right?

Or maybe they will bring back regional clearances so that cinemas don't actually have to compete with each other and release windows so that cinemas don't have to actually compete with home theater and we'll be back we started (as explained by Colonel Sanders in The Matrix Strikes Back).

[Martin Brooks]

Most theaters would continue to provide the shitty presentations they are offering today, but now with scratches!



And then what?

Will Hollywood figure out how to make movies cheaply enough that the streaming model is sustainable? Will streaming prices rise? Will new releases recieve à la carte pricing?

Or maybe nothing will change. Many of their big movies are already unprofitiable on the big screen. Now they'll be unprofitable at home!

But...

Could a new exhibition industry eventually emerge?

What might that look like?

It couldn't be about simply putting movies in front of eyeballs, since streaming already delivers that. It would have to be about showmanship, about creating a magnificent immersive shared experience.

Right?

Or maybe they will bring back regional clearances so that cinemas don't actually have to compete with each other and release windows so that cinemas don't have to actually compete with home theater and we'll be back we started (as explained by Colonel Sanders in The Matrix Strikes Back).

Theaters competing with each other isn't going to be much of an issue in most markets because there are fewer theaters all the time. I still believe that we (unfortunately) lose a third to half of the theaters over the next five years.

[Scotty Wright]

I think we’ve digressed a bit from the topic at hand.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I think we’ve digressed a bit from the topic at hand.

Umm, welcome to Film-Tech Scotty. Thread drift is something that makes this forum much better than the rest. If you want stale, always on topic discussions perhaps this forum is not a good fit for you. Best advice is sit back, make some popcorn and enjoy the show.

[Scotty Wright]

The Coolidge in Boston also expecting a print.

I’ve also been told Regal Opry Mills IMAX may get an IMAX print and a brief run for Tenet on IMAX film prior to Dune Part Two, which would be quite the surprise.

[Henry Atkinson]

The Coolidge in Boston also expecting a print.

I’ve also been told Regal Opry Mills IMAX may get an IMAX print and a brief run for Tenet on IMAX film prior to Dune Part Two, which would be quite the surprise.

Exciting. I wonder if we'll see some Tenet 5/70 prints getting shown again.

[Scotty Wright]

Somerville Theatre in Massachusetts will also have a 5perf print of Dune Part 2. They will run Tenet on 70mm the week before Dune releases.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm hoping the Dallas-Fort Worth area gets at least one or more 70mm prints. There are certain people living in the Dallas area who have great 70mm film projection skills.

And then what?

Will Hollywood figure out how to make movies cheaply enough that the streaming model is sustainable? Will streaming prices rise? Will new releases receive à la carte pricing?

My own guess is if too many commercial cinema locations disappear it will doom movies as we currently know them. Those major Hollywood movie studios will be getting a whole lot more minor.

There is no plausible business model for big budget 2 hour movies without a healthy commercial cinema release platform. Commercial cinemas make those big budget movies possible. It takes tens of thousands of screens in operation to deliver that revenue.

Movies will still get made even without the existence of cinemas. They just won't have the production value of movies that play theatrically. They'll literally be made-for-TV movies. But they'll exist in a far more difficult environment than all those straight-to-video movies we used to see on video rental store shelves.

In past decades it was possible for a movie to play in only a few theaters but then do well on home video and premium cable TV channels (especially if the movie won a bunch of awards and critical acclaim). Deliberately crappy straight-to-video movies could also be profitable since they had retail visibility on rental store shelves. Movies have little if any retail presence anymore. They just get dropped into the ever-growing pile of previously existing movies, shuffled up to disappear deep in the queue of a streaming service user interface.

In that environment I would expect far fewer 2 hour movies to be made. With the streaming services the emphasis has already been on series TV for some time. These companies haven't been forthcoming with how much money their streaming services have been losing. Big shakeups are on the horizon. And, by the way, the general public is already pissed off enough as it is with price hikes.

[Scotty Wright]

12 IMAX 70mm locations and 22 (and counting) 5perf locations for Dune Part Two.

Tenet is being sent out to the same IMAX 70mm locations as Dune for the week before. A lot of the same 5perf locations but some different ones.

[Jim Cassedy]

<edited> I wonder if we'll see some Tenet 5/70 prints getting shown again.

We ran TENET and several other 70mm titles in the weeks leading up to OPPENHEIMER last year. The
TENET print we got was practically new. . . even the shipping cases looked like they just came from the
factory - - - almost no dings or dents, & you didn't need a hydraulic jackhammer to open them. I know
we're getting the new DUNE in 70mm at my theater, but I haven't heard anything about TENET possibly
returning. (Although it wouldn't be the first time I was the last to know about something major like this)


Tenet2.jpg

[Henry Atkinson]

We ran TENET and several other 70mm titles in the weeks leading up to OPPENHEIMER last year. The
TENET print we got was practically new. . . even the shipping cases looked like they just came from the
factory - - - almost no dings or dents, & you didn't need a hydraulic jackhammer to open them. I know
we're getting the new DUNE in 70mm at my theater, but I haven't heard anything about TENET possibly
returning. (Although it wouldn't be the first time I was the last to know about something major like this)


Tenet2.jpg

Exciting! I'm hoping those prints get to make the rounds again soon. We are currently trying to get a few Nolan 70mm movies on the books in the coming months, if we run Tenet, I hope our print is in that sort of shape.

[Scotty Wright]

Did they ever reissue his films before Interstellar on 70mm? I think there’s a 70mm floating around of Inception but it may be a personal print Nolan has loaned out for a specific event.

[Michael Coate]

Confirmed ”Dune: Part Two” 70mm bookings. It’s a developing story and so expect some more to be announced/confirmed in the run-up to its release.


AUSTRALIA 15/70
Melbourne — Melbourne Museum IMAX

CANADA 15/70
Woodbridge, ON — Cineplex Vaughan

USA 15/70
Indianapolis, IN — Indiana State Museum
Irvine, CA — Regal Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21
King of Prussia, PA — Regal UA King of Prussia 16
Los Angeles, CA — TCL Chinese
Nashville, TN — Regal Opry Mills 20
New York, NY — AMC Lincoln Square 13
San Francisco, CA — AMC Metreon 16
Tempe, AZ — Harkins Arizona Mills 18
Universal City — AMC Universal Citywalk 19

UK 15/70
London — BFI IMAX

-----

CANADA 5/70
Montreal, QC — Cineplex Banque Scotia 13
Toronto, ON — Cineplex Varsity 12
Vancouver, BC — Cineplex Park

DENMARK 5/70
Copenhagen — Imperial Bio

NORWAY 5/70
Oslo — Klingenberg Kino Nordisk Film

USA 5/70
Atlanta, GA — Plaza 2
Atlanta, GA — Tara 4
Austin, TX — Galaxy Highland 10
Brookline, MA — Coolidge Corner 4
Chicago, IL — Music Box
La Mesa, CA — Reading Grossmont 10
Los Angeles, CA — Vista
Milwaukee, WI — Oriental 3
New Orleans, LA — Prytania
New York (Brooklyn), NY — Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn 7
New York (Manhattan), NY — Angelika Cinema 1,2 & 3
New York (Manhattan), NY — Angelika Village East 7
Oakland, CA — Grand Lake 4
Plymouth, MN — Emagine Willow Creek 12
San Francisco, CA — Alamo Drafthouse New Mission 5
Silver Spring, MD — AFI Silver
Somerville, MA — Somerville 3
Tucson, AZ — The Loft 3
West Hollywood, CA — Landmark Sunset 5

[Chris Haller]

The 70mm run of Dune: Part Two is an interesting choice for another completely digital production. Dune Part One was famously laser printed to 35mm stock and then scanned back in for additional film texture. I suspect that something similar will be done for Dune: Part Two as Greig Frasier also did the same with his work on The Batman.

To me, its a decision oriented exclusively for digital presentation. We'll know for certain once the American Cinematographer for the movie comes out soon, but it wouldn't surprise me if they skipped that for the large format prints and relied on the texture of the printing negatives for each format to do the same work. Either way it likely will look and feel similar to the other digital - film productions that have cropped up in the last half decade. It's an interesting way to generate prestige for a production.

This definitely wouldn't have happened on quite a scale like this without the November delay, but it IS interesting that its happening at all. I'll be attending a preview screening here in Rochester in IMAX Digital Xenon, and a screening in IMAX 15/70 at AMC Lincoln Square 13. If I still have any appetite, I might head out to Toronto to see the 70mm print at the Varsity, but jury's still out.