Supersize him: Man of Steel back on IMAX -- in 3-D

NEW YORK -- Look up on the screen, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman -- and he's flying right at the audience!\nWhen the iconic superhero returns to the big screen June 28 in Warner Bros. "Superman Returns," the movie will be released simultaneously in 3-D on the really big screens of IMAX theaters.\nIt's the first time IMAX has gone 3-D with a live-action film, and even old fans are excited.\n"I'll be there before the theater opens," Richard Donner, the director of the original "Superman," said, referring to his local IMAX. The 1978 film made Christopher Reeve a star.\nDonner told the New York Daily News he tried to showcase Superman's first flying sequence in that movie as a hologram, but the equipment of the era didn't allow him to project the vision in his head onto a movie screen.\nTechnology has come a long way since.\nTo mimic human depth perception, the new IMAX 3-D format takes the regular two-dimensional movie footage and assigns it as either the sightline of the right or left eye. Then, using computers, a technical team shifts and renders a second spool of film to match the other eye's viewpoint, explained Greg Foster, chairman and president of filmed entertainment for IMAX.\nFoster explained that newfangled polarized 3-D glasses fuse the images from the two separate spools of film at the bridge of a moviegoer's nose for a realistic perspective.\n"We intend to help the audience literally fly with Superman," said Foster.\nBecause only Superman could leap IMAX screens -- as high as eight stories tall -- in a single bound, the effect is supersized.\nApproximately 20 minutes of "Superman Returns" has been converted to 3-D. Little images of a pair of flashing green glasses in the corner of the screen alert viewers to put on their own glasses five seconds before a 3-D scene.\nIt's the first Hollywood live-action feature to have scenes converted to IMAX's new 3-D technology, which debuted with the 2004 animated movie "The Polar Express"