The success of James Cameron’s Avatar has kicked off an avalanche of 3-D movies. Some of the those movies have been good, some of them have been pretty rotten. Personally, a 3-D movie is not any good unless there is a good storyline behind it.

The NYTimes talks with James Camerson on the future of 3-D. However he also brings up and interesting point about the 3-D post-production process. If you have a $150 million movie, and you take three to four months to do a 3-D conversion process at the end of the movie, you are still paying interest on the $150 million bank loan that is costing the studios money.

Q. Do you think the success of “Avatar” set off an arms race among the Hollywood studios to release as many 3-D movies as possible?

A. I think it accelerated a move toward 3-D that was already in progress. There were a number of 3-D films that were being very successful over a period of three years or so, but “Avatar” was the moment that the wave crested, if you will. After that it was undeniable that 3-D was going to be lucrative and it was here to stay, and it wasn’t a gimmick and all those things. And I think there was a rush, a gold rush, and some mistakes were made and some bad 3-D reached the marketplace. And then there was a little pushback from the audience, that we don’t want to pay extra for something that’s not a great experience. And I think that the studios have been somewhat chastened by that, and they’re now attempting to do 3-D at a higher quality.

via James Cameron on ‘Avatar,’ ‘Titanic,’ and the Future of 3-D @ NYTimes.com

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