In an effort to realize the business potentials of digital cinema, Disney and other Hollywood studios have agreed to join hands with exhibitors in a project to digitalize movie theaters in the United States and Canada.

Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, a consortium that includes major theater chains Regal, AMC and Cinemark, announced the investment deal, which will install digital projectors and other needed equipment at 20,000 theaters in the two countries from early next year.

The project, with an initial investment of 525 million U.S. dollars, could eventually grow to more than 1 billion dollars, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported on its website Thursday.

Under the deal, Hollywood studios will pay about 1,000 dollars per movie per screen at these digitalized theaters, to help offset the consortium's upgrading costs.

Digital display systems are expected to lower studio costs to make celluloid film copies and enable theaters to charge moviegoers more for tickets to digital 3-D movies, entertainment industry observers said.

Heavy investments by movie theaters to go digital had been a major bottleneck stemming the new technology from becoming a common movie-going experience, and Hollywood studio were earlier reluctant to bear part of theaters' costs.

Hollywood is expected to churn out dozens of digital 3-D movies in coming years as executives and producers hope that the movies' stunning effects would attract moviegoers, who have been distracted by new entertainment media like home theaters, video games and the Internet, back to theaters.

Disney is set to release five digital 3-D movies next year. Other studios participating in the project are Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal Pictures.

(Xinhua News Agency October 4, 2008)