Variety reports that at the Digital Cinema Summit at NAB in Las Vegas, John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), urged Hollywood studios and cinema owners to settle their differences on digital cinema fees. Failure to do so would within the next two months would mean that there won’t be enough time to do the installations required to meet the 10 3D releases planned for 2009.
The deadlocked negotiations relate to the studios trying to reduce the Virtual Print Fee that helps defray exhibitors’ costs to install digital cinema systems.
Currently there are less than a thousand 3D screens in America and fewer than that globally.
Among the 3D release scheduled for 2009 are James Cameron’s Avatar and DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens.
