Filmmakers bringing 3-D back to theaters

After a brief incarnation in the early 1950s and a short-lived revival in the 1980s, 3-D movies are getting serious consideration among filmmakers who want to send images leaping off the movie screen and into the audience.

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas and “Titanic” director James Cameron are among those promoting a new digital alteration that converts two-dimensional movies into 3-D.

Theatergoers still will have to wear those familiar cardboard glasses with red-and-blue cellophane, although backers of the new technology say it doesn’t cause the eyestrain common with past 3-D efforts.

Lucas said he hopes eventually to release all six of his “Star Wars” movies in 3-D format that can be shown in regular movie houses.

“It looks better than the original, to be honest with you,” he told theater owners at their annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas.

A snippet of “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones” converted to 3-D was screened, and the images showed remarkable depth in a scene where Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi pursue an assassin in a flying vehicle.

Developed by In-Three Inc. of Agoura Hills, Calif., the new technology involves converting a movie into two slightly offset images, one for each eye. The special glasses trick the brain into perceiving the picture as a single image.

Unlike some 3-D systems that require two side-by-side film projectors, In-Three’s system operates with a single digital projector, the filmmakers said.