Hollywood greed damaged 3D, says Dreamworks CEO

The CEO of Dreamworks, Jeffrey Katzenberg, has spoken out over the flood of sub-standard 3D movie conversions that swamped cinemas, accusing Hollywood greed of damaging public view of 3D.

He told CNN that the growing public apathy towards the 3D form was caused by "a singular and unique characteristic that only exists in Hollywood: greed."

"So I think there were, unfortunately, a number of people who thought that they could capitalize on what was a great, genuine excitement by movie goers for a new premium experience, and thought they could just deliver a kind of low-end crappy version of it, and people wouldn't care, or wouldn't know the difference.

"And… nothing could have been further from the truth," he continued.

Dragon training

Dreamworks, which is the animation house behind 3D hit How to Train Your Dragon, has long been an advocate for 3D and Katzenberg still maintains that the film industry can turn things around.

"I think Hollywood has managed to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory here. And with time we'll get back there again, but it's only going to come by understanding and embracing this as a creative, storytelling tool, and a way of giving an enhanced movie theater experience, premium experience.

"So, our great filmmakers that are using these tools today, Marty Scorsese, Stephen Spielberg, Peter Jackson, more and more of the really great users of both technology and great storytelling are now starting to get at it, and they will deliver good experiences to people, and I think it will take us a while, but we'll earn it back."

His comments echo those of Panasonic's marketing director Andrew Denham, who stressed the importance of quality 3D content, saying that 3D suffered due to a plethora of poor quality Hollywood conversions.