According to Piper-Jaffray, a leading, international middle market investment bank and institutional securities firm, “New 3-D technology will drive 3-D content production, displays and related technology over the next decade. The overall 3-D market will be substantial, growing to an estimated $25B by 2012 and generating a compound annual growth rate of 50% over this period.”

And recently in the New York Times (“Mixed Returns at Summer Box Office” September, 7, 2009), “One clear lesson of summer [2009] and spring [2010] is that 3-D in general and IMAX in particular are no longer a movie going afterthought. ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,’ ‘Transformers,' 'Avatar,' and 'Alice in Wonderland' all received boosts from premium-priced 3-D screenings.”

3-D technology has the benefit of reaching out to an audience and giving them a more intimate and truer-to-life experience. Whereas most people perceive 3-D as that action sequence that jumps out of the screen into the audience, 3-D really provides a more realistic view of the subject than 2-D, which is flat with no depth perception.
In film, the term 3-D is used to describe any visual presentation system that attempts to maintain or recreate moving images of the third dimension, the illusion of depth as seen by the viewer. 3-D films use two images channeled, respectively, to the right and left eyes to simulate depth by using 3-D glasses with red and blue lenses (anaglyph), polarized (linear and circular), and other techniques. 3-D glasses deliver the proper image to the proper eye and make the image appear to "pop-out" at the viewer and even follow the viewer when he/she moves so all viewers basically see the same image.

The earliest 3-D films were presented in the 1920s. There have been several "waves" of 3-D film distribution, most notably in the 1950s when they were promoted as a way to offer audiences something that they could not see at home on television. Currently, films are being presented in cinemas in digital 3-D, which makes pixel-to-pixel alignment possible and creates a more pleasurable viewing experience than older technologies.

Through the entire history of 3-D presentations, techniques to convert existing 2-D images for 3-D presentation have existed, however rather ineffectively. The combination of digital and digitized source material with relatively cost effective digital post processing has spawned a new wave of conversion products. In June 2006, IMAX and Warner Brothers released “Superman Returns,” including 20 minutes of 3-D images converted from the 2-D original digital footage. George Lucas has recently announced that he may re-release his “Star Wars” films in 3-D based on a conversion process from the company In-Three.

In late 2005, Steven Spielberg told the press he was involved in patenting a 3-D cinema system that does not need glasses, and which is based on plasma screens. A computer splits each film-frame, and then projects the two split images onto the screen at differing angles, to be picked up by tiny angled ridges on the screen.

In January, 2008, 3ality Digital and National Geographic Entertainment released U23D, the first live-action movie to be totally shot in digital 3-D using software and camera technology developed by 3ality Digital.

Ben Walters suggests that both filmmakers and film exhibitors have regained interest in 3-D film. There is now more 3-D exhibition equipment and an increasing number of dramatic films being shot in 3-D format. One incentive is that the technology is more mature. Shooting in 3-D format is less limited, and the result is more stable. Another incentive is the fact that while 2-D ticket sales are in an overall state of decline, revenues from 3-D tickets continue to grow.