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..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington



Take Mel Gibson and Jesus Christ Superstar out of the box-office mix, and, I’m guessing, all anyone in Hollywood would have been talking about Monday morning would have been the amazing performance by NASCAR 3D: The IMAX Experience. Even though its $1.47-million weekend haul could only carry the racing documentary to 11th place in the weekly derby, its per-screen average of $21,579 was more than twice that of the nearest competitor, The Passion of The Christ.

NASCAR 3D set records for both the highest grossing opening weekend for a film originally produced by IMAX, and the highest per-screen average for an IMAX 3D film.

It isn’t all that unusual for an IMAX movie to dominate the per-screen category, if only because there are so few theaters equipped to handle large-format features. NASCAR 3D opened in 68 theaters, 17 more than Disney’s The Young Black Stallion, which brought in $630,000 over Christmas weekend. After 12 weeks, The Young Black Stallion is still playing in 39 theaters and, last weekend, scored a perfectly respectable per-screen average of $2,459, bringing its gross total to $5.9 million.

Four years ago, during its exclusive four-month engagement on 50-plus screens, Disney’s Fantasia 2000 did even better. On its second weekend, the animated semi-sequel’s per-screen average rocketed to $87,289, dwarfing everyone else in the same category.

Unlike Fantasia 2000 and The Young Black Stallion, however, NASCAR 3D was targeted at a specific niche audience, comprised mostly of older teens and adults. It would be easy to pigeonhole the average viewer as a Southern baseball-cap-wearing male, as well, except for the fact that the NASCAR circuit has been attracting droves of women and Yankees for years. Neither does the South have a lock on large-format theaters.

Dixie may have given birth to stockcar racing, but, over the past 53 years, it has truly gone nation-wide. NASCAR races now take place in Milwaukee, Chicago, southern California, New Hampshire and Las Vegas, as well as in the backyards of the good ol’ boys who long ago found a way to turn moonshine running into a spectator sport.

Auto racing is no stranger to Hollywood, either. Mack Sennett cast champion driver Barney Oldfield as himself in a 1913 comedy, and studios have revisited the sport hundreds of times since. Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000 (1965) and Lamont Johnson’s The Last American Hero (1973) -- with Jeff Bridges playing a character based on the great Junior Johnson -- pretty much set the standard for NASCAR-era cinema. Robert Mitchum’s seminal moonshine-mayhem cult-classic, Thunder Road (1958), may still be playing in some Southern drive-ins, but it doesn’t have much to do with organized racing.

In 1977, Richard Pryor portrayed the struggle of Wendell Scott, the driver who broke NASCAR’s color line. Upon its release 13 years later, Tony Scott’s Days of Thunder – a Simpson/Bruckheimer mini-epic, starring Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall and Nicole Kidman – probably did more to popularize the sport outside Dixie than any other cultural force of the ‘90s.

Hollywood, though, has always found it easier to chronicle the drama and glamour inherent in Formula I racing, than the more proletarian pleasures of NASCAR. Now that NASCAR has shed its redneck roots and become a major spectator and television sport, though, Hollywood has begun to embrace racing, as well as its culture and studly young heroes. The early success of NASCAR 3D ensures that the process will now move into warp speed.

Unless you were among NASCAR’s fan base, though, it’s highly likely that you missed the media campaign surrounding the film’s release.

Television advertising was reserved exclusively for spots during races shown on the broadcast and cable networks. They began in February, with the Daytona 500, and will continue being shown into July.

"IMAX is the tortoise, not the hare … we’re marathon runners,” explained IMAX president of filmed entertainment, Greg Foster. "We’ll talk about how this movie is doing several weeks down the line. Space Station is in its 23d month.”

While the launches of most studio products these days are supported by saturation marketing campaigns, IMAX films are backed primarily by niche and specifically targeted buys, lasting well past an opening weekend. For a large-format movie to be successful financially, it has to have legs (and word of mouth) that carry it great distances.

“This movie ultimately worked because of a partnership between NASCAR, Warner Bros. and IMAX, and it was a wonderfully complementary process,” Foster said. “Warners provided a good chunk of the financing, while NASCAR provided the tracks, the drivers, the cars and access to the sport. IMAX provided the producers, the cameras and filmmaking process.

“We weren’t stepping on each other’s toes everywhere along the way.”

On the marketing side, Foster adds, “NASCAR provided the 75 million fans and one to three television commercials during the races on Fox, TNT, NBC, FX. Warners brought the fans who might not be racing or IMAX enthusiasts, and we brought the IMAX loyalists.

“We did a lot of publicity and PR, and bought a lot of newspapers. Warners also brought the Turner network, the company that runs the NASCAR website, AOL for Broadband, Sports Illustrated has done features and Warners will handle the DVD and videos.”

Most print critics have been very kind to NASCAR 3D, which is unusual for most original IMAX products. Some of the reviewers who didn’t like the movie labeled it an “infomercial for NASCAR, and, in a sense, they’re right.

As a partner in the production, NASCAR opened the gates to its tracks, personnel and crews. Many of the high-speed scenes were shot on days usually reserved for rest by the crews and drivers, and owner Jack Roush designed and built a car that could carry the bulky 3D cameras, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour.

“We basically had two days of racing to ourselves,” Foster said. “There are only three IMAX 3D cameras in the world, and they were all working on the movie.”

The drivers saw the film as an opportunity to sell themselves, as well as their sport … and, incidentally, their sponsors. Certainly, the rowdy, boozing and “show us your tits” segments of the crowd were left out of the movie. The crashes sequences, while truly scary, also seemed a bit antiseptic.

Nonetheless, NASCAR 3D took better advantage of the IMAX and 3D formats than almost any other title in the series. Seeing a tire fly off of a real car, going top speed, and landing on your lap, is an experience unequaled in cinema.

In the years since Fantasia 2000 was released, Disney retrofitted The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast for large-format screens, just as other studios did with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Gladiator, Apollo 13 and The Matrix Reloaded. Last winter, Disney opened the animated feature Treasure Planet on IMAX screens day-and-date with its launch in standard theaters, a strategy employed, as well, by Warners with Matrix Revolutions (its third Harry Potter and Catwoman will follow).

The format now has effectively shed the image it had of being a provider only of dry scientific and nature documentaries. Museums continue to insist on such products – dry, of course, is open to interpretation – but the megaplexes have provided a home for more entertainment-oriented titles.

A few weeks ago, star driver Bobby Labonte carried an ad for The Passion of The Christ on the hood of his NASCAR racer. So far, at least, no one has approached IMAX to retrofit Gibson’s blockbuster for the giant screen.

Thank God, synergy only goes so far.

- by Gary Dretzka

March 18, 2004


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