Few weeks of any 12 months are larger or extra necessary for the enterprise of movies than CinemaCon. The annual gathering offers studios, theater house owners, and exhibition-minded tech firms an opportunity to point out off essentially the most thrilling developments within the film enterprise. However whereas the improvements that debut at CinemaCon could have necessary implications for the theaters the place viewers get their movie repair, the biggest information out of the conference nearly all the time comes from the stage shows, the place studios exhibit their biggest gambles.
2024’s CinemaCon was no completely different, however with greater than 100 titles both proven or talked about in the course of the occasion, it may be exhausting for a daily film fan to maintain up with all of the information — particularly since a lot of the trailers and clips previewed at the con aren’t launched to the general public. So that can assist you preserve monitor of all essentially the most promising things from the conference, Polygon has put collectively a listing of what we learned from being on the bottom at CinemaCon 2024.
2024 goes to be a large 12 months for animated movies
The demise of animated movies has been tremendously exaggerated, because the CinemaCon 2024 lineup exhibits. Almost each studio obtained in on the animated motion. Disney and Pixar have large sequels developing, together with Moana 2, Inside Out 2, and a Lion King prequel. Paramount has the primary Transformers animated film in nearly 40 years. And Common is releasing a brand new Despicable Me film and a stunning-looking adaptation of the children’ e book The Wild Robotic. Maybe essentially the most shocking addition to this crop is the Warner Bros. entry: Lord of the Rings: Conflict of the Rohirrim, which wasn’t previewed at CinemaCon, however was pitched to exhibitors as “anime” in the course of the studio’s stage present.
With all these movies set for launch within the subsequent eight months, 2024 is definitely the biggest 12 months for animation since 2019, a 12 months that included The Lion King, Toy Story 4, Frozen 2, Methods to Practice Your Dragon: The Hidden World, The Secret Lifetime of Pets 2, and The Lego Film 2. It’s exhausting to think about any 12 months dwelling as much as all these enormous releases, however with what’s on the calendar thus far, 2024 would possibly even have an opportunity.
Hollywood has lastly acknowledged Glen Powell as a celebrity
Glen Powell has been proper on the cusp of superstardom ever since 2018’s Set It Up, however he’s by no means gotten the alternatives he deserves. However after Prime Gun: Maverick in 2022 and Anybody However You in 2023, it appears like 2024 is lastly his 12 months. He was an enormous presence at CinemaCon, approaching stage to introduce a brand new look at Twisters, the place he performs a thrill-seeking twister chaser with an F5 ego. Paramount additionally introduced him because the lead for its new Working Man reboot, directed by Edgar Wright. With these two star performances on the best way, plus Netflix’s hilarious Hit Man set to launch this 12 months, Powell is lastly getting his time within the highlight.
Horror followers are going to have an excellent and busy 12 months
Even in essentially the most tumultuous instances at the field workplace, horror movies are all the time a dependable wager, which is a part of why they had been such a standout of this 12 months’s CinemaCon. Each main studio panel featured at least a number of scary movies set for 2024, and loads of them seemed positively improbable.
Disney previewed two scenes from its upcoming Alien: Romulus, which takes the Xenomorph again to its horror roots. Warner Bros. proved it’s bullish on the Shyamalan enterprise, exhibiting off trailers for M. Night time’s new film Entice, a thriller set at a stadium live performance that’s too enjoyable to even describe, and The Watchers, the primary movie from his daughter, Ishana Shyamalan, which follows a lady who will get trapped within the woods by monsters. In the meantime, Lionsgate is about to launch its trilogy of Strangers movies in addition to By no means Let Go, which has Halle Berry attempting to maintain her youngsters protected after the apocalypse.
Paramount confirmed off a powerful horror lineup too, beginning with A Quiet Place: Day One on the best way, a prequel for the horror collection directed by Michael Sarnoski (Pig) and set in New York. The studio additionally revealed the primary trailer for Smile 2, the sequel to its 2022 breakout hit. The film will apparently observe a pop star performed by Naomi Scott, whose followers slowly begin to come down with the collection’ iconic killer smile.
Lastly, Common could have made the biggest horror wager of the 12 months with Nosferatu, the brand new vampire film from The Witch and The Northman director Robert Eggers. It’s set for a large Christmas Day launch. The film’s first trailer premiered at the present, and it seemed completely unbelievable, stuffed with moody shadows, horrified shrieks, and the twisted type of Invoice Skarsgård’s ravenous vampire. The studio additionally confirmed off Converse No Evil, an eerie remake of a European cult hit from a few years in the past, and introduced sequels for 5 Nights at Freddy’s and M3GAN, although these final two gained’t hit theaters till 2025.
Everybody needs to make the following Barbenheimer
All through the whole four-day conference, the preferred phrase on folks’s lips was (*4*) Everybody from studios to movie-theater house owners to know-how firms had one thing to say about final 12 months’s mixed breakout hit(s), Barbie and Oppenheimer, and what it meant for theaters that two completely completely different movies launched on the identical day may very well be box-office sensations. The one factor nobody appears to have a solution for was how one can do it once more.
For the theater house owners, Barbenheimer was a positive signal that studios shouldn’t have any fears about programming their movies in opposition to one another, as a result of audiences had been more than pleased to assist two massive movies at as soon as. This type of takeaway actually is sensible in case your essential objective is promoting tickets and filling seats. Studios appeared to really feel equally, however none of them appeared able to say what that meant for them.
In truth, the one meaningfully shared date on the calendar thus far is Nov. 27, the discharge date for each Moana 2 and Depraved. Whereas a part of Barbenheimer’s power was that it counterprogrammed two very completely different movies that audiences had been excited to see, it’s exhausting to think about a Moana sequel and a Wizard of Oz prequel musical have any audiences that don’t overlap. However whereas this 12 months’s CinemaCon didn’t have a Barbenheimer announcement, it’s clear that studios are nonetheless rigorously attempting to choose and select the right classes to remove from the phenomenon.
