Expected to be equipped to show 3-D movies by 2009, up from 700 today. But DreamWorks and Fox each want all of them. DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who has been campaigning to get theater operators to accelerate the conversion to 3-D, has told people that he needs 6,000 screens for ""Monsters vs. Aliens.""

""I would not want to be put in the position of choosing one over the other,"" said Mike Campbell, CEO of Regal Entertainment Group, the nation's largest theater chain. ""I want both ? just not on the same day.""

But Campbell is confident that one of the studios will change its date over the next two years. ""It's too early in the game to start panicking,"" he said. ""If we are sitting here in March 2009 having this same conversation, I will be much more concerned. I think it will all get worked out.""

Movie studios are increasingly planting their flags further ahead in time to secure the most desirable weekends. That's partly because of the high stakes: Production and marketing costs for the average movie now top $100 million. A movie's opening weekend can account for as much as one-fourth of the box-office take domestically. And Memorial Day traditionally kicks off the lucrative summer season.

But a head-to-head battle could leave both movies with fewer box-office receipts.

""These two pictures will have a tremendous demand,"" said Michael Patrick, chief executive of Carmike Cinemas Inc., who expects each of his 307 theater complexes to have at least two 3-D-capable screens by 2008. ""We will want to play three screens of one movie in each complex. If we need to, you could play both of them, but you would never get as large a gross.""

Neither DreamWorks nor Fox would comment, but people close to each studio doubt that each would back away from the date anytime soon.

Katzenberg has been trying to convince theater owners that 3-D technology is a way to grow attendance and keep young audiences weaned on video games interested. When he announced in March that DreamWorks movies would be made only in 3-D, he proclaimed that the technology was the ""greatest opportunity for movies ? to come along in 30 years.""

To push his cause, Katzenberg has visited executives of the country's largest movie theater chains, including Regal and Carmike. DreamWorks, however, has yet to release details about ""Monsters vs. Aliens"" to whet their appetites.

Today's 3-D technology is light-years ahead of the 1950s, when viewers donned green and red glasses. Exhibitors must shell out $30,000 to $50,000 per screen for new equipment such as digital projectors with 3-D capability and special reflective silver screens. Images are crisper and more lifelike.

DreamWorks chose Memorial Day 2009 first, and movie executives said Katzenberg had little incentive to back away from the date because the dueling 3-D movies would keep the pressure on theaters to continue upgrading with new technology.

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