Robinsons Behind Blades But Here To Stay

Meet the Robinsons was easily the most interesting new release of the weekend - not least in it's 3D incarnation - but America's public plumped for Blades of Glory instead. Can you hear me sigh? Will Ferrell and Jon Heder each need a new routine, badly.

Some naysayers are already pointing the finger at Robinsons and saying that this weekend's box office proves that the new '3D fad' is dying out already. Hardly. It's just getting started. Indeed, these figures may well suggest that the appeal of 3D is burgeoning.

Less than a tenth of all theatres screening Meet the Robinsons in the US could so in 3D - and it's less than 4 percent of screens here in the UK, where Mr. Bean's Holiday was the weekend number one. There's every chance that people have been avoiding the 2D incarnation of the Robinsons, perhaps feeling that it's not 'complete'. Imagine if your cinema offered you Grind House this weekend but without the fake trailers - you'd feel rather shortchanged, right? Well, this is more like offering Grind House but only in black and white.

I asked Phil McNally, the 3D supervisor on Meet the Robinsons, as well as Dreamworks' upcoming Monsters vs. Aliens, if he thought 3D cinema was here to stay this time. Unsurprisingly, he agreed with me:

3D has always been killed by the technology problems of the past. The two projectors being out of alignment or the two films running out of sync etc. With digital production and projection all of these problems and therefore headaches can go away for ever leaving it up to the artists to develop the cinematography of stereoscopic films.

I think the Real-D projection system has got us all across that line that has held stereo back for 100 years. The time is now and there is no reason to ever go back. I expect to see the balance slowly shift from mono to stereo as is did from black and white to color. What an exciting time for us to see this transition.

I know I'm excited. Aren't you?

Dreamworks Gets Talent

Variety have announced that Chris Sanders, director of Lilo and Stitch and originator of American Dog, has signed to Dreamworks. His first project is to be Crood Awakening, previously in development with Aardman and co-scripted by John Cleese.

Add to this the fact that Disney 3D's Phil McNally is headed to Dreamworks too and it seems like the Dreamworks Animations' batting average might be about to increase drastically.

Of course, it looked that way when Aardman signed, and while I suppose it was true - no other animation from the studio even comes close to Curse of the Wererabbit - the sad fact is, both Chicken Run and Flushed Away were, frankly, sub-par for Aardman efforts. Dreamworks also dumped Richard Goleszowski's Tortoise and the Hare, one of Aardman's most interesting and ambitious concepts.

If Aardman did good for Dreamworks, yippee for Dreamworks - but they did bad for Aardman, so I was glad to see the partnership fold. I don't want the same to be true of Sanders and McNally. I want to see them do even better work than they have at Disney.