Editorials > Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" In 3-D?

George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," now celebrating its 30th anniversary, will be "dimensionalized" for a stereoscopic 3-D theatrical release on a potential 1000 screens. New Amsterdam Entertainment has hired a 3-D company called In-Three to perform the operation.

The Hollywood Reporter calls this the second "legacy" film to be given the dimensionalization treatment, the first being "The Nightmare Before Christmas." The film was released in October 2006, October 2007, and will return to theaters for at least the next two Octobers. THR puts the cost of this process at between $50,000-$100,000 per minute depending on the complexity of the shot/effect. That sounds like quite a lot until you realize that if they dimensionalize the 128-minute cut of "Dawn," it will cost at minimum $6.4 million, and at most $12.8, certainly cheap for a full length motion picture. With a thousand theaters to put this in, it could end up being a mildly profitable venture. "Nightmare" made $8.7 million in its 2006 run alone (though there's certainly a difference in profitability between a PG-rated holiday classic and an R-rated cult classic).

So the only question is: Will the die-hard fans approve of this tampering? I suppose that will depend on how the finished product looks.

-David Morgan