Disney Digital 3-D

**Disney Digital 3-D** is a brand name used by The Walt Disney Company to describe three-dimensional films made and released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, mostly under the Walt Disney Pictures label and shown exclusively using digital projection.

Disney Digital 3-D is not a presentation or a production format or technology, but instead purely a marketing concept. Films advertised as Disney Digital 3-D come from several sources, film, digital camera, animation software, and presented using any digital 3D technology, including RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D and MasterImage 3D. There is no specific handling involved.

## History

### Pre-2005 Disney 3-D films

Disney had previously released two 3D animated shorts in 1953, *Adventures in Music: Melody*, the first American 3D animated short, and *Working for Peanuts*, starring Donald Duck and Chip 'n' Dale.

Disney also produced 3D films for its theme parks, including Disneyland's *3D Jamboree* (1956), featuring the *Mickey Mouse Club* Mouseketeers and including *Melody* and *Working for Peanuts*; *Magic Journeys* (1982), *Captain EO* (1986), *Muppet\*Vision 3D* (1991), *Honey, I Shrunk the Audience* (1994), *It's Tough to Be a Bug!* (1998), the film portion of Tokyo DisneySea's Magic Lamp Theater, and *Mickey's PhilharMagic* (2003).

Between 2003 and 2005, Dimension Films (then-owned by The Weinstein Company) had made a couple of 3D films. Two of them were *Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over* and *The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D*.

### Post-2005 Disney 3-D films

Disney released *Chicken Little* on November 4, 2005, as the first Disney Digital 3D film. For the release, Disney collaborated with RealD to install RealD's 3D digital projection system featuring Christie CP2000 2K DLP projectors along with silver screens for 84 screens in U.S. theatres.

A re-release of *The Nightmare Before Christmas* on October 20, 2006, followed *Chicken Little*. *Nightmare*, a 1993 stop-motion film, was initially shot in 2D on 35mm-film with the 3D version generated by Industrial Light and Magic from this source using computer technology.

In 2007, Disney re-released the film *Working for Peanuts* with the theatrical release of the 3D version of *Meet the Robinsons*.

The first live-action Disney Digital 3-D release was *Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert*, which followed in 2008. In 2009, *G-Force* became the first film in Disney Digital 3-D from producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

On May 29, 2009, Disney released Pixar's *Up*, the first Pixar film presented in 3-D. This film was then followed by a 3-D double feature re-release of *Toy Story* and *Toy Story 2* on October 2, 2009, although Disney altered neither of these films' animations. Subsequent Pixar films, such as *Toy Story 3* and *Cars 2*, were also released in Disney Digital 3-D.

Disney released two of their traditionally animated films with 3D conversions in 2011; *The Lion King* – released on August 26 internationally and on September 16 in North America, and *Beauty and the Beast* – limited to a 13-day run in September at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles for North America, as well as short runs in New Zealand, Japan, Australia, India and Spain in 2010. Don Hahn, who produced both films, supervised both re-releases. *Beauty and the Beast* in 3D received a wider release on January 13, 2012. Disney re-issued two more movies in 3D in 2012; *Finding Nemo* on September 14 and *Monsters, Inc.* on December 19. Disney was about to re-release *The Little Mermaid* in 3D on September 13, 2013, but they cancelled it due to the underperformances of the other Disney 3D re-releases until further notice. However, the 3D version of *The Little Mermaid* did play for a limited engagement at the El Capitan Theatre from September to October 2013.

Starts 2017, Disney removed the Disney Digital 3D logo from its feature film trailers. In 2018, following the new deal with IMAX and Dolby Cinema, Disney pulled the Disney Digital 3D logo from posters. Now Disney Digital 3D logo only appears on its Blu-ray 3D release.

Disney has released films from Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Studios (as 20th Century Fox in 2019) in the 3D format, beginning with *The Avengers* (2012), *Star Wars: The Force Awakens* (2015) and *Dark Phoenix* (2019), respectively. However, Disney did not brand the 3D format as "Disney."

## List of Disney Digital 3-D films

### Feature films

#### Reissues

 *Ratatouille* (2007), *WALL-E* (2008), *Up* (2009) and *Onward* (2020) 4 movie marathon | March 6, 2020

## See also

* List of 3D films (2005 onwards)
* Digital 3D
* RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, Panavision#Panavision 3D and XpanD 3D (presentation technologies)