The latest 3D movie, Shrek Forever After is a 4th of the Dream Works Animation series. Studio expected its opening at around $120 million, but the actual opening was very disappointing. In the opening weekend, it opened just for $71 million. Many critics have already labeled it as a flop movie. Audience has given good response to its 3D version.
Three years ago, the 3rd movie in the series ‘Shrek the Third’ earned $122 million domestically. Compare to that this results are not up to the mark. In the domestic market the opening week has only given $71 million.
Hollywood is worried about the low opening of this latest 3D movie. Many people feel that the low opening is because of the high ticket prices. BTIG researcher, Richard Greenfield said that it is the way of telling by the US consumer to the exhibitor that the prices of the 3D movie are very high. They can easily pay the high money for the better movie like Avatar or Alice in wonderland, they will not be paying so high amount for the average movie like Shrek. They will prefer 2D over 3D for such movies.
It is going to be disturbing for Hollywood executives as many big studios are in line for creating 3D movies in the future. At Dream Works Animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg declared that he is planning to produce all the future movies in stereoscopic 3D. Due to the result of the Shrek-3D and audience’s response everybody at Hollywood studios is worried.
The opening weekend collection is usually tells the story of the box office performance for the Hollywood movie. First weekend is crucial for the box office. Though it has low opening in the U.S., in the international market Shrek is very much successful. In Russia it has opened to $20 million and even passed records of Avatar.
If we bifurcate the profit by 3D and 2D prints then 3D has played major role in the success of Shrek Forever. 3D screens have got 60% more revenues. 3D premium has got $13 million. Some expert say’s that maybe audience has been bored by the Shrek series as this is the fourth in the series. There are many claims in the market and we need to wait for few more days as it is too early to talk about it as this is a recently released movie.
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