Attention, U.S. moviegoers.

Theater owners and Hollywood studios would like to thank you for keeping the movie industry afloat these past couple of years by raising the cost of movie tickets for 3-D and IMAX showings. The price hike hits Friday, March 26 across the nation and is described by The Wall Street Journal as the steepest increase in a decade.

Theaters owned by AMC Entertainment Inc., Regal Entertainment Group, and Cinemark Holdings Inc. are leading the charge to drain your wallet.

BTIG media analyst Richard Greenfield surveyed 10 markets across the country and reported to the LA Times yesterday:

On average, they are raising ticket prices for 3-D movies by 8% this weekend. The price of a movie in 3-D on large format Imax screens is going up even faster, rising an average 10% for adults and 12% for children. 2-D ticket prices, meanwhile, are going up 4% on average for adults and 3% for children. The average surcharge to see a movie in 3-D is now $4. For Imax 3-D, it has gone up to nearly $6.

Motivated by the success of James Cameron’s insanely overrated Avatar and Disney’s current chart-topper Alice in Wonderland, studios are more committed than ever to producing 3-D fare (Warner Bros. recently announced that all it’s tent-pole releases would be 3-D), the cost of which eventually hits your pocket via theater owners who typically charge in the $15-to-$16 range for 3-D screenings, citing that the added cost goes primarily towards upgrading theaters so they can play the 3-D films.

Of course, those prices don’t go back down once the theater has been equipped, nor will any money be spent on making sure that the assholes around you aren’t yapping on their mobile phones and that you don’t get a meat thermometer to the throat should you protest.

The supposed demand for 3-D is like a Jedi mind-trick. Studios roll out their movies and marketing campaigns to make people believe that they’re missing out on something special and … it works, or so it would seem based on a handful of flicks. But, hey, 3-D is cool if done with the right movie (like Big Momma’s House 3).

Avatar sucked because Cameron is a shitty writer, but the 3-D was pretty flawless. Still, the most irritating thing about the 3-D onslaught is the fact that the majority of the titles being released this year and next (i.e. Clash of the Titans, the Spiderman reboot) weren’t even shot in 3-D, but instead converted from 2-D in post (which always looks sloppy and has a dizzying effect). How’s that for sleight of hand?

Directors are being pressured into shooting in the format regardless if the flick truly benefits from 3-D and old films are being converted for re-release (i.e. 300). Even uber-director/producer Michael Bay found himself being pushed by Paramount/Dreamworks to utilize the technology in his upcoming Transformers 3. Bay won’t be shooting Optimus Prime in 3-D, but he is still weighing the whole conversion option … begrudgingly.

Bay explains:

I’m used to having the A-team working on my films, and I’m going to hand it over to the D-team, have it shipped to India and hope for the best? This conversion process is always going to be inferior to shooting in real 3D. Studios might be willing to sacrifice the look and use the gimmick to make $3 more a ticket, but I’m not. Avatar took four years. You can’t just shit out a 3D movie. I’m saying, the jury is still out.

Cameron has echoed Bay’s comments in recent interviews.

He says:

This is another example of Hollywood getting it wrong. Sony says, “We’re doing Spider-Man in 3D.” The director doesn’t say, “Hey, I want to make the movie in 3D.” The studio says, “You want to direct this movie? You’re doing it in 3D, motherf*cker!” That’s not how it should be.

Of course, Cameron has also announced plans to convert Titanic into 3-D for future theatrical re-release. James Cameron is an asshole.

For a list of authentic and converted (fake) 3-D films, check out RealorFake3D.com.

Paradox Entertainment, the company behind Marcus Nispel’s Conan the Barbarian reboot, is set to launch Buck Rogers 3-D. Paul W.S. Anderson will direct the project from a script by Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.

"Don't freak out, Erin, but there's a robot with a dutchboy haircut onboard."

Anderson tells Variety:

Buck has already been such a huge influence on action-adventure franchises like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones,’ so for me it is a thrilling opportunity to be allowed to return to the source, and relaunch such an epic character.

The plot for the new Rogers film is being kept under wraps for now. But, like its source material, the story will center on a modern day pilot who awakens to find himself in the future.

The “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” comic strip ran from 1929 through 1967. In 1979, NBC adapted Rogers into a prime-time television serial starring Gil Gerard, Erin Grey, and Erin Grey’s camel-toe in a painted-on jumpsuit. The series ran for two years, but Grey provided boys with masturbation fodder up until the emergence of Slave Leia in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

I fondly remember fondling myself at 6-years old while watching the episode where a bunch of sex-starved midgets attempted to strip Grey’s Col. Wilma Deering’s clothes off with their telepathic powers. Despite the fact that my baby-penis could only ejaculate rainbows at the time, I still knew it was a hot scene:

(Correct me if I’m wrong, beloved readers, but isn’t that the black midget from Bad Santa?)

I don’t care if Anderson casts a monkey’s turd to play Buck, but I am totally beside myself in anticipation to see who will play the new Wilma Deering. I can picture Natalie Portman in the part, but Anderson’s genre-director standing would most likely turn her away. Megan Fox would be good. Or, maybe, Rachel Nichols and her huge breasts (she’s already starring in Paradox’s Conan the Barbarian). Feel free to drop some names.

Anderson’s horror/sci-fi creds include Resident Evil, Death Race, AVP: Alien Vs. Predator, Soldier, Event Horizon, and the upcoming Resident Evil: Afterlife 3-D.

Stripper-turned-Oscar-winning-screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) is having her latest script Young Adult fast-tracked by Mandate Pictures. The thriller follows a divorced, thirty-something author of young adult fiction as she stalks an old high school flame who has moved on to start a family of his own.

She tells Vulture:

It has elements of humor, but it’s pretty serious and fucked up. You don’t get to see women be antiheroes that often, where it’s like somebody like Mickey Rourke, who gets a comeback in The Wrestler. It’s rarer that you’ll have a studio say, “Let’s have an actress come back and be ugly!

Mandate Pictures produced Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell last year. Cody, of course, is the writer of the criminally underrated high-school set frightener Jennifer’s Body.

I wonder if Cody wears a thong and listens to Motley Crue when writing. I do.

(Update: OK, so I caught a screening of Young Adult and it isn’t a thriller. It’s a hilarious dark comedy starring Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt. Go see it!)