Right when you thought you were safe popping a couple Advils before heading to a screening of the latest blockbuster to preempt the inevitable 3-D headache — think again. Now, a South Korean company wants to outfit 200 movie theaters in the U.S. with 4-D technology that would allow audiences to smell and feel movies.
CJ Group, which runs Asia’s largest movie theater chain, has invented the so-called 4-D technology, which makes theater seats rumble during spaceship landings, emits gunpowder-like smoke and flashes strobe lights during car chases, has set up a lab in Los Angeles to test out the 4DX technology, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The technology is already popular in South Korea, Mexico and Thailand, where the 4-D experience has been used during screenings of “Avatar,” “Prometheus” and “Pirates of the Carribbean: On Stranger Tides.”
CJ Group has a deal with a U.S. chain to make 200 theaters 4-D capable over the next five years, with theaters in L.A., New York and other large markets set to have the technology this year.
Just think: If this technology had been invented but a year earlier, audiences would have been able to smell the food poisoning scene in “Bridesmaids,” and almost feel the shards off glass slicing their faces during “Drive’s” car chase scenes.
What’s next? Pelting audiences with bullets?