In 3D, Alice Reigns — but the Ogre Stumbles

So you knew Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was big, but did you realize it was this big?

This week, the stereo-3D Alice crossed the $1 billion mark in worldwide box-office receipts. Need some perspective on that number? It’s only the sixth film in history to make that much money. According to boxofficemojo.com, the only films to have performed better internationally are Avatar, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and The Dark Knight — and Alice is set to blow past Batman, too. Even the movie’s much-remarked-on short theatrical window didn’t seem to slow it down. (It comes out on home video, where viewers will watch in 2D, on Tuesday.)

Of course, there are a number of reasons why Alice succeeded on a grand scale. They include name recognition for the director worldwide, an enduring fan base for the source material, and the film’s appeal to the so-called “family” audience. But all those factors weren’t enough to make, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a box-office juggernaut.

It’s tempting to say that 3D made the difference for Alice, boosting ticket prices and adding a must-see factor to the theatrical release. It left in its wake a couple of other 3D films that did all right for themselves. Despite some kvetching about a very fast-tracked conversion, Clash of the Titans did more-than-solid business just a few weeks later, earning more than $475 million worldwide, and after an opening weekend that was perceived as soft, the stereo-3D How to Train Your Dragon turned into a kids’ film with long, long legs — it’s now approaching a $450 million take worldwide.

Hard to imagine that every other studio in Hollywood hasn’t been eyeballing its release schedule to figure out which movies remaining on the 2010 slate are good candidates for 2D-to-3D conversion, right? (There are anecdotal reports on the Internet that a few moviegoers were confused to learn that they wouldn’t get 3D glasses with their Iron Man 2 tickets.)

But, as the screenwriter William Goldman famously declared of Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Last weekend’s release of Shrek Forever After looked like a slam-dunk for DreamWorks Animation and Paramount, bringing a new installment of a beloved and very lucrative family-film franchise to theater screens in stereo 3D for the first time. It’s true that there’s nothing embarrassing about a $71 million opening, which the film enjoyed in North America. But if you consider that Shrek 2 did well over $100 million on opening weekend and Shrek 3 opened to more than $120 million, $71 million starts to look a little paltry — especially considering the 3D/IMAX surcharges that push single-ticket prices to $18-$19 in major markets.

So even the spectacle of 3D couldn’t keep some of Shrek’s magic from evaporating over the long haul. Just goes to show that, despite the format’s proven audience appeal, audiences won’t show up just to see stereo 3D unless it’s attached to something they already find compelling.