Here’s an interesting idea: Googolplex Theaters creates a virtual reality movie theater so that, effectively, everyone gets their own screen.
Of course, once you simulate a screen in VR, why stop there? You’ve already got 3-D in the display, and between the backlog of 3-D movies and a decade or so of computer animation, there are a lot of possibilities.
You think that’s crazy, one of my favorite graphic novels Talisman depicts a world where everything is done through a phonejack to the brain. So cinemas literally place your mind into the movie, see hear smell EVERYTHING. Enough to make the main character puke and have to go home. (She’s not too thrilled with the jack system evidently. 😉 ) What’s interesting about the story besides the main character’s own quest for enlightenment is that when we finally achieve true VR, we may end up hungering for the older traditions of yore. 🙂
(We’re already doing this somewhat, see all the 60s 70s and 80s trend revitalizations? Transformers, man, yeah! ;p)