Forget 3D—What’s Next?

When Harry Potter abandons 3D only because of release dates, you know 3D's becoming seriously pedestrian. But look, more shiny things on the horizon!

With ticket sales for 3D movies falling short of industry expectations, Hollywood is already looking for the next big gimmick that will allow them to charge an extra $36 dollars for matinée seats.  Here’s what might be next:

Preliminary tests
Preliminary tests for Ninth-O-Rama—in which everything in the film is set to Beethoven's Ode to Joy—have been going rather well

Choose Your Own Film. ‘If you decide Indy should jump into the pit of snakes, skip to frame 1:39:58.22. If you decide Indy should throw Belloq into the pit of snakes, skip to frame 4:42:16.19.’

Physical effects. Already, many amusement rides have the ability to simulate dramatic moments like blasting off into space or crashing into water by weakly spraying the audience or rocking about a bit. Imagine this, except even better—perhaps a screening of Titanic where you actually drown along with Jack, or a screening of Terminator 3 where you actually suffer the full impact of a nuclear apocalypse. Researchers are still working on what to do with the corpses.

DreamD. Various machinery induces REM sleep in the audience, so they can just dream that they saw the movie. This way, the movie studios don’t have to produce inane crossovers and blockbusters themselves. Inception is expected to be the first to use this format, in a move that will, amazingly enough, further confuse the world.

WikiPlot. The audience is allowed to edit the plot synopsis, cast list, and box office earnings of the movie in real-time. While a sci-fi epic involving thousands of velociraptors warping into the Betelgeuse system to fight Spitfires in outer space commanded by a digitally recreated Winston Churchill can be very expensive to realise, that’s why the audience can edit the box office earnings.

XtremeWideScreen. With the 640:1 aspect ratio, the audience has an angle as wide as a metre stick inside a black hole through a funhouse mirror in a fish-eye photograph. Unfortunately, in conventional theatres, this basically looks like the screen has a very thin tear through the middle.

Temporal-O-Vision. A chemical released into the theatre distorts your perception of time and actually makes the events of the film seem as though they are happening in real time. Unfortunately, the chemical used is illegal in 47 US states and 198 countries worldwide.