It's been over a year since I wrote about the 3D scam movie studios are running in order to squeeze more money out of people's pockets, and of course they are succeeding by making silly 3D movies look worth seeing.

And that's the reason why, really, I barely go to the movies nowadays. It is sad to see the art of making a movie is second in priority to the art of selling it. It means that marketing a "successful" movie depends on whether it is natively shot in 3D (which is technically difficult) or if it is possible to fake it and force movie-goers to wear silly glasses hence paying more.

In my opinion it is a scam played out by two players, the studios and projector systems pushing each movie theater to adapt to this technology to increase ticket sales and digital projection units respectively. In the end movie theaters are forced to invest in this new technology just to surrender a bigger chunk of the receipts to the studios, and again we are all falling for it.

Today in the New York Times I read an article about this situation, where some directors understand this problem and others are happy with it, (read article) this was evident in Comic Con in San Diego 2010 where directors like Michael Bay will have partial 3D viewing in his next Transformers 3 and others like J.J. Abrams see it as an unnecessary addition to movie-going. Don't forget some directors are paid a commission of the first dollar gross and/or after, so it is not surprising for a director to agree to higher tickets sales, for them is a win-win between them and the studios.

At the end though, I still think 3D movies are a resilient fad that will result with movie theaters getting stuck with these over-priced digital equipment. The irony is that we will be forced to pay higher ticket prices to compensate for this cost one way or another and movie studios will still get a bigger chunk of the receipts.

So you see, either way they are running a scam to squeeze more money out of you, and that's one more reason why I love Netflix.