There’s some good work coming up: Universal’s “Wicked” at Christmas will be incredible. Disney’s “Kingdom of Planet of the Apes,” coming next month, looks otherworldly. Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17,” in which Robert Pattinson keeps dying and getting cloned, from Warners, looks insane in the best possible way. 

But the strike took its toll. The studios don’t have the full complement of movies and there’s no way around it: 2024 is going to be painful at the box office. The hope in the room (and there was some) is really about 2025 and 2026. 

A week in Las Vegas at the annual CinemaCon gathering of movie exhibitors with midday cocktail parties at Nobu (thanks Lionsgate) didn’t mask the fact that the coming eight months of movies will be scraped together after a brutal year. It will be painful for moviegoers who want something other than angry shoot-em-ups, ear-shattering sound tracks and constant horror. The slates of Warner Bros., Paramount and Lionsgate particularly screamed of unrelenting testosterone and a stream of fear, anger and retribution. 

I’ve said it before: Is there no joy, no tenderness, no intimacy permitted as part of the moviegoing experience? Do we audiences ever get to dream? To feel awe and empathy in between the white-knuckle moments? Are Hollywood executives who greenlight the movies unfamiliar with … y’know, kindness? Think about it please.

Here are my CinemaCon takeaways. 

1. Disney might have had the fewest movies, but it has the biggest winners, and had the best presentation. Several years ago, Disney — at the top of its game and in the height of arrogance — showed up to CinemaCon and presented a giant screen with a calendar of its upcoming releases. And that was it. This year, the studio tried a lot harder, presenting delightful chunks of footage from their slate — including a stunning glimpse of “Apes” — and onstage patter, with everyone from Marvel’s Kevin Feige to the dapper distribution chief Tony Chambers dropping the F-bomb. It was liberating, honestly. Disney’s strength lies in its array of brands that cater to audiences and taste across the board, and in a year like this one it showed: movies for kids with “Inside Out 2” and “Moana 2,” the latter of which was presented by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; a sensory, four-quadrant experience like “Apes”; and a fully hilarious foray into R-rated superhero fare with “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Actually, it was refreshing to not be bombarded with classic Marvel superhero fare. The studio was smart to let the movies do the talking, and the exhibitors responded with cheers of appreciation. 

2. New Line lives? The Warner Bros. slate presented by Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy (maybe not professional moderators, but at least real humans) felt like nothing so much as New Line Cinema circa the 1990s, where DeLuca spent a decade of his career. The movies were heavy on genre — violent action, horror and crime. So sure, “Furiosa” by George Miller with Anya Taylor-Joy, is a feast for all the senses. But by the time you got through “The Watchers” (horror), “Traps” (thriller), “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (fantasy-horror) and Todd Phillips’ follow-up to “Joker” — “Folie a Deux” (I don’t know what to call this thing, but it’s mad creepy) — the audience was begging for a reason to laugh or cry — anything but cower in fear. The movie on the Warner slate that got the strongest response from the CinemaCon audience was not made by Warner. It was the Sundance documentary “Super/Man,” acquired by the studio. The trailer they showed about the courage of Christopher Reeve, the love of his wife and his devotion to his children, made everybody cry. Yeah, Hollywood, that’s a thing. 

3. “Where are the women?” That’s what I scrawled in my notebook after the third consecutive studio presentation and the umpteenth cast with a half-dozen men and one single woman. (Actually, it was after Paramount’s animated “Transformers One” and the studio’s decades-later sequel of “Gladiator 2.”) Not only weren’t there movies to appeal specifically to a female audience, even the so-called “broad” appeal movies have overwhelmingly male casts and a token woman. “Gladiator II” has Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington … and Connie Nielsen. “Transformers One” has Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and a bunch more guys … and Scarlett Johansson. This absurd imbalance was supposed to have been addressed after the awakening of #MeToo, no? Women are half the population, and we like movies, too. But you’d never know it from these slates. Lionsgate was especially egregious in trotting out a full slate of movies that were a litany of violent combat, breaking bones, machetes and knives. Guy Ritchie and Eli Roth were in the mix, of course. Keanu Reaves was in four of the movies. One guy got stabbed in the eye. “Ballerina” stars a woman (Ana de Armas) but it’s no less violent for that. I don’t know what they’re eating over there, but it feels like a diet of nails and rawhide.

4. Universal is riding high after its Best Picture win with “Oppenheimer” and a box office performance that defied expectations in 2023. And while the studio, blessedly, had a variety of films on its slate that suggested something other than just horror and violence (although they’re going hard on the Blumhouse canon with sequels to “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “M3ghan”), that slate is undeniably thin. It’s going to be a long wait until December, when the studio can unveil what appears to be a spectacular experience in “Wicked,” starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the first of two films. Director Jon M. Chu said the production planted 8 million tulip bulbs to create the practical effect of fields of blooms in the movie. Universal cleverly gave every attendee at their presentation a tulip that lit up in the dark and created a magical, glowing effect in the auditorium.

5. Nepo-baby alert. I would have thought that Warner Bros. would be embarrassed to bring not one but TWO M. Night Shyamalan progeny out on stage to tease their new movies. There was 22-year-old Ishana with a twist on her dad’s horror in the woods genre; and 27-year-old Saleka who sang live, which was probably not a great decision for “Trap,” written and directed by M. Night. But then again, the studio is merely being paid a distribution fee for movies Shyamalan has financed himself.

Good luck to the box office, and see you next year, CinemaCon!

The post Takeaways From CinemaCon 2024: Not Enough Movies, Too Much Testosterone appeared first on TheWrap.

Extended sneak peeks defined Thursday afternoon’s presentation, with 75 minutes of sneak peek footage from films across the studio’s slate, highlighted by a whopping 35 minutes of this summer’s Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2,” along with sneak peeks of films like “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Moana 2,” and “Alien: Romulus,” among others.

It’s a double-down on a strategy that Disney has taken in CinemaCon past, largely eschewing the banter between filmmakers and actors to dedicate more presentation time to showing exhibitors more of what’s going to be in their theaters.

The longest portion of onstage banter came from Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, who talked to the crowd without a teleprompter about the studio’s upcoming releases, with the help of “Captain America: Brave New World” star Anthony Mackie and “Deadpool & Wolverine” director Shawn Levy. Dwayne Johnson also appeared to show the opening song from “Moana 2.”

Disney blasted to the top of the box office market share charts in the late 2010s with a murderer’s row of tentpoles that brought audiences in all over the world. But in 2023, that excellent track record gave way to a far bumpier year as hits like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and comeback stories like “Elemental” were interspersed with high-budget flops like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “The Marvels” and “Wish.”

Ironically, despite those flops, Disney still had the second-highest market share in 2023 with $1.44 billion in North America, showing how integral even a diminished Mouse House is for a theatrical market that is still quite a ways away from where it was prior to the pandemic.

But until it can get there, the film industry is turning to Disney — and especially Marvel — to provide the consistent jolt of tentpole support it once provided to the box office every two months or so. Due to strike delays, Disney pulled entirely out of the Q1 2024 slate, and for the first time in more than a decade, it will not have a Marvel film ready for release in the first weekend of May.

But “Deadpool & Wolverine” will be one of the top contenders for the title of summer’s highest grossing film when it hits theaters in late July, and the studio will be hoping for a rebound in family turnout with the release of “Inside Out 2” in June and “Moana 2” at Thanksgiving.

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The presentation also featured what has become an annual CinemaCon tradition: domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson making a spectacular comedic entrance, followed by a keynote speech in which he delivers some tough love for the theater owners in attendance. Aronson came on stage dressed as a gladiator to promote Ridley Scott’s upcoming sequel to 2000’s “Gladiator,” ushered in by a Roman battalion and riding a chariot.

“Much has changed, and not enough has changed,” Aronson said. “It’s clear that moviegoers love going to the movies, but we as an industry must do better.”

Aronson offered praise to the Illinois theater chain Classic Cinemas, whose CEO Chris Johnson was honored at CinemaCon with a career achievement award. Aronson showed a reel of customer reviews for Classic Cinemas praising the chain’s high picture quality and cleanliness.

“We should all aspire to emulate this level of care and service to our audiences,” Aronson said. “Premium experience continues to be embraced, but we must also improve the non-premium experience, including pricing. There is an abundance of research that just simply can’t be ignored any longer if we want to get back to the previous levels of moviegoing, and as Michael [O’Leary] said earlier, now is the time for capital improvements. We lost a significant percentage of frequent moviegoers and we must work together to get them back.”

Paramount CEO Brian Robbins also acknowledged the talks surrounding the potential acquisition of Paramount’s parent company, but only to make a joke about Aronson starting a GoFundMe page to raise funds to make his own M&A bid. On a more serious note, Robbins touted to movie exhibitors the long-term plans Paramount has made for its commitment to theaters, including pivoting films like “Mean Girls” from streaming to theatrical and renewing its production deal with “Sonic” producer Neal Moritz.

Robbins then rattled off a slew of 2025 and 2026 projects, including a live-action comedy from “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker as well as famed rapper Kendrick Lamar. Damien Chazelle’s next film will also be released by the studio next year, as will revivals of the “Scary Movie” and “Naked Gun” series. The studio is also expanding the presence of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in theaters with an R-rated adaptation of acclaimed comic miniseries “The Last Ronin.”

But not everything was about the far-flung future. Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry showed off an extended sneak peek at “Transformers One,” the next phase in Paramount’s efforts to bring animated versions of its biggest franchises to theaters. Carrying a significantly lower budget than the live-action “Transformers” series, Paramount is hoping the new film will keep longtime fans of the Autobots buying tickets while bringing in a new generation of fans.

Paramount also showed off extended trailers for John Krasinski’s family film “IF,” a Memorial Day weekend title that will try to do what other studios have struggled to do: draw in family audiences without the advantage of a familiar IP as a selling point. Lupita Nyong’o was also on hand to show an extended trailer of “A Quiet Place: Day One,” which shows New Yorkers struggling to survive in the early days of the alien invasion without making a sound.

The show ended with a trio of first-ever looks for Paramount’s end-of-year slate, including a teaser for “Smile 2,” which will follow a Lady Gaga-esque pop star who is haunted by the deadly curse at the center of Parker Finn’s breakout 2022 horror hit. A first look at “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and the arrival of Sonic’s popular nemesis Shadow the Hedgehog was also shown.

Finally, the show ended with a first look at “Gladiator II,” a sequel to one of Ridley Scott’s biggest critical and commercial hits. Promising to be as emotional, epic and violent as the first “Gladiator,” Paramount is setting up the film as its Thanksgiving offering. It will mark the blockbuster debut of “Aftersun” and “All of Us Strangers” star Paul Mescal.

The post Paramount Unleashes an Avalanche of Announcements — and More of Chris Aronson’s Tough Love — at CinemaCon appeared first on TheWrap.

In a brief teaser, we see Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, utterly ruined after being defeated by Sonic yet again. But he finds a new way to defeat that infernal hedgehog when his assistant Stone (Lee Majdoub) discovers the fearsome Shadow the Hedgehog, whom Knuckles, played by Idris Elba, describes as “much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously.”

Introduced in the video game “Sonic Adventure 2” in 2001, Shadow has become one of the most popular characters in the Sonic series. Originally a villain, as in the film, he’s since become an antihero who sometimes is at odds with Sonic about how to fight Dr. Eggman.

Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey and Elba will return to play the voices of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, but there’s still no word yet on who will voice Shadow, even though the film just finished production.

Prior to the release of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” held the record for the highest-grossing video game film ever with $405 million worldwide, becoming the first big hit family film since the pandemic shut down theaters. Since then, the video game movie craze has only gotten bigger with hits like “Mario” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”

Now, Paramount is committing Sonic to the lucrative and competitive holiday season, where it will be going up against films like Disney’s “Mufasa,” a prequel to “The Lion King” made in the same style as the 2019 CGI remake.

“Sonic 3” will hit theaters Dec. 20.

The post ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3’: Shadow Makes His Big Screen Debut at CinemaCon appeared first on TheWrap.

“Each [successful sequel] prompted the audience to reach out and ask us for more, and they’re being very specific,” Lionsgate’s motion picture group chair Adam Fogelson said in Las Vegas. “They want to know about what happens to specific characters. They want to know what happens in specific places. They want to learn more about the rules and the worlds in which they’re set.”

“So we will not be creating new installments just because we want to or just because it’s good business, but because the audience demanded it,” he added.

While they were not far along enough in production to have footage to show during the presentation, several projects were touted by Fogelson — including a newly announced reimagining of “The Blair Witch Project” and a film based on the board game “Monopoly” that will be produced by Margot Robbie. A remake of “Highlander” and an adaptation of “Naruto” are also in pre-production from the studio.

But Lionsgate did surprise exhibitors with the first-ever look at the teasers for the two biggest films on its 2025 slate: the “John Wick” spin-off “Ballerina” and Antoine Fuqua’s “Michael” biopic. Ana de Armas will play a ballerina who follows John Wick into the life of a vengeful assassin, while the “Michael” teaser promised a performance from Jaafar Jackson that will span his legendary pop star uncle’s turbulent life.

Beyond franchises, Lionsgate made action into a major portion of its presentation, kicking things off with an appearance by Henry Cavill to show off a pair of films he made with director Guy Ritchie: the WWII-based shoot-em-up “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” coming out next week, and the thriller “In the Grey” set for January 2025.

The studio also showed off its big plan to join the rising trend of video game movies with Eli Roth’s adaptation of “Borderlands,” its grisly adaptation of “The Crow” starring Bill Skarsgård, and the bloody assassin thriller “The Killer’s Game” starring Dave Bautista.

Lionsgate also showcased a pair of horror titles: a reimagining of the 2008 home invasion tale “The Strangers,” and “Never Let Go,” an original film starring Halle Berry as a mother fighting to protect her two children in a cabin in the woods where they must remain tethered to their house by a rope in order to survive against a horde of deadly creatures.

But it wasn’t all gore and gloom. Lionsgate also touted its ongoing partnership with Kingdom Story Company with its upcoming adaptation of the book, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” a family comedy directed by “The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins.

Aziz Ansari’s upcoming comedy “Good Fortune” was also shown, with the comedian playing a down-on-his-luck guy who gets help from a “budget guardian angel” named Gabriel, played by Keanu Reeves. Gabriel switches the poor sap’s life with that of a billionaire, played by Seth Rogen, in the hopes of teaching him that wealth doesn’t solve his problems. Turns out, it does.

Ansari stole the show in Vegas, roasting Fogelson and promising the crowd that he was not “Henry Cavill in brownface.” The two also showed a viral picture from production of Reeves on crutches, with Fogelson joking to Ansari that “Keanu Reeves survived four ‘John Wick’ movies, but somehow you broke him.”

Lionsgate has used a mix of smaller production budgets and presales to foreign distributors to keep the box office break-even point on their films low. While the studio had some misfires in 2023 — “Expandables 4” grossed only $38 million worldwide — it also saw “John Wick: Chapter 4” become the highest grossing film in that series with $441 million worldwide, while “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and “Saw X” revitalized their respective franchises, with Lionsgate announcing plans for future installments, including “Saw XI” in 2025.

The post Lionsgate Lays Out Its Franchise Plans — and Lots of Action — at CinemaCon appeared first on TheWrap.

On Wednesday morning, Angel Studios’ distribution team led by EVP Brandon Purdie thanked movie theater owners for helping turn Alejandro Monteverde’s drama about the fight against child trafficking into a $250 million box office hit.

“We are eternally grateful to our theatrical partners who helped champion our studio and enabled us to bring films that amplify light into movie theaters,” Purdie said. “There is no better place than CinemaCon to celebrate and give credit to our exhibition partners.” 

Angel Studios has already returned to theaters this year with Monteverde’s follow-up film “Cabrini,” which was released in theaters as part of a partnership with Fathom Events.

The studio will release four additional films in 2024, timing all of its releases around holiday weekends. That starts on Memorial Day weekend with “Sight,” an inspirational drama starring Terry Chen as Dr. Ming Wang, an eye surgeon who looks for a way to restore the eyesight of an orphan who was blinded by an acid attack.

On July 4, the studio will release “Possum Trot,” a film with Letitia Wright as executive producer that provides another angle of the child trafficking issues that “Sound of Freedom” explored with a drama about a church community in East Texas who adopts 77 children from their local foster care system.

The studio’s Thanksgiving release is “Bonhoeffer,” a true story drama about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who witnessed the rise of the Nazis and became involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Angel will close out the year with its first theatrically released action thriller “Homestead,” a post-apocalyptic tale starring Neal McDonough.

The studio will also release its first animated film, “David,” on Thanksgiving 2025. The film is a musical retelling of the famous biblical tale of David vs. Goliath, and it will be released on Nov. 21, 2025, five days before the release of Disney’s sequel to “Zootopia.”

Angel Studios exploded onto the scene not only because of “Sound of Freedom,” but because of the “pay it forward” program it used to encourage early viewers of the film to buy tickets for others to see it. More than 2 million tickets were sold through the program, and Angel plans to develop more ticketing initiatives through its partnership with Atom Tickets and offer them directly to members of the Angel Guild, a community where Angel’s most loyal viewers can provide their input on which potential project should be greenlit next.

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“Finally we’re at a point where we can look forward, and the story is going to be very different very soon,” AMC CEO Adam Aron said. “Our industry can see recovery just over the horizon. The box office in 2025 and 2026 is going to be roaring hot compared to 2023 and 2024.”

In 2023, AMC’s EBITDA was up tenfold from 2022, to $425 million. But, as with other theater chains, it is still trailing 2019, pre-pandemic levels.

To try to improve its margins, AMC has been closing theaters, shuttering 169 locations since 2019. At the same time, it added 60 theaters in better conditions, better locations and with better lease terms. The 60 that the chain added had EBITDA that was almost $100 million more than the 169 that it closed, Aron said.

But AMC has also benefitted from squeezing more out of each customer. In 2019, food and beverage sales were about $5 a head. Recently they have been over $9 per person due largely to growth of over 80% in food and beverage sales. Aron said that AMC’s profit per patron (EBITDA per patron) is up about 35% today from what it was pre-pandemic.

“Mostly we’re selling a lot more food and drink,” he said.

Aron used these trends within AMC as an example of why he believes that the industry can continue to see revenue from both box office and concessions rise even if the trend of overall contraction that began with pandemic closures continues. About a third of the 4,200 active theaters in the U.S. produce probably less than 10% of the box office, Aron estimated.

“Does the industry need them to stay open? There’s not a desperate need for the bottom third,” he said.

AMC turned the entire film industry on its ear last fall when it made the surprise announcement that it would partner with Variance Entertainment to directly release “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” at its locations and at other chains. Grossing $261 million worldwide at a time when studios were moving films out of 2023 due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, the film showed the power of alternative content to fill in holes in the release slate, though Aron knows that Swift was a particularly strong outlier.

Aron said the company is leaning into its success. “We would love to be able to bring more concert films to theatrical exhibition,” Aron said. “I can confirm that we are talking to other artists. I can’t confirm we have landed anything yet.”

He added that AMC is also exploring using venues to host sports games, including football, baseball and hockey contests. And college sports, particularly college football, could be exhibited for local audiences around where schools are based, he said.

While concert films can help stem the tide, there’s no replacement for a consistent stream of studio releases. Aron has constantly spoken of the urgent need for greater theatrical output for both AMC and exhibition as a whole in earnings calls and public interviews.

Barring another strike, the industry seems to be ramping up its quantity of releases for the latter half of 2024 and throughout 2025.

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“Keeping pace with the increasing demands of the movie-going public is not new, but it does require capital,” O’Leary said in Las Vegas. “And to our friends in the financial industry, investing in the talented people that run the innovative theatres across this country and the world is a smart investment. Getting
more capital into the system will benefit everyone — creatives, studios, exhibition, local communities and, most importantly, movie fans.”

O’ Leary began full-time duty as NATO president following last year’s CinemaCon, hitting the ground running during a summer box office season that saw theaters bask in the box office bonanza of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” only to face delays of multiple films due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that shut down Hollywood for six months.

Those delays have left the U.S. box office 11% behind last year’s pace after the first quarter of 2024. On Sunday, exhibition consulting firm Gower Street Analytics predicted that the global box office would reach $32.3 billion this year, down $1.6 billion from 2023.

Despite the setbacks, O’Leary stressed that the fundamentals of theatrics are still sound and that the biggest obstacle to getting the theatrical economy back to full speed isn’t a lack of public interest in moviegoing, but a lack of consistent releases for theaters to put on their screens.

“To have a truly successful filmed entertainment industry, a variety of movies that appeal to moviegoers is critical,” O’Leary said. “It is not enough to rely solely on blockbusters — we must have a strong and vibrant market for movies with smaller or medium-sized budgets.”

O’Leary also announced several new initiatives to highlight and elevate owners and operators of cinemas — including a “Faces of Exhibition” video series that highlights independent cinema operators, a regional development initiative to enable more newcomers in the industry to attend CinemaCon and an anniversary program to highlight cinemas that have been operating for 50, 75 and 100 years, including B&B Theaters, which is celebrating its centennial anniversary in 2024.

“Over the past year, my highest priority has been meeting and talking with as many people from across our business as possible. I’ve had countless conversations with theater owners, and this helps me to understand your unique perspectives, your passion for movies on the big screen, to understand what motivates you and to understand what keeps you up at night,” O’Leary said. “I want to thank everyone who has welcomed me into this special community, and supported me and the NATO team over the past year.”

O’Leary was joined by Charles Rivkin, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association, who, as in CinemaCons past, touted his organization’s efforts to combat piracy. Rivkin announced that the MPA would be supporting federal legislation that would create a court process for blocking sites that are specifically created to host pirated films, TV shows and other copyrighted content.

“Site-blocking is a common tool in almost 60 countries, including leading democracies and many of America’s closest allies,” he said. “There’s no good reason for our glaring absence. No reason beyond a lack of political will, paired with outdated understandings of what site-blocking actually is, how it functions and who it affects.”

CinemaCon 2024 runs through April 11 in Las Vegas.

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In 2024, are exhibitors out of the woods?

Larry Etter, SVP of Malco Theaters in Tennessee, said he’s not going to try to predict the future after the curveball of six months of Hollywood labor stoppages.

“In the first half of 2023, we were seeing a significant increase in business at our theaters compared to 2022, and we were making some pretty ambitious plans based off of that, but then movies got delayed because of the strikes and we had to pull back,” Etter told TheWrap. “Moviegoing is habitual. It’s all about momentum, and consistent momentum is the big thing that we’re really missing.”

This week, Etter and thousands of other execs, owners and employees in exhibition will gather in Las Vegas for CinemaCon to discuss how to reverse the trend of inconsistency that has plagued the business since the pandemic. Exhibitors that spoke to TheWrap said that despite the rough last few years, they are confident that the rate of wide-release films in theaters will continue to tick up over the second half of 2024. And 2025 figures to be a solid year, with major IP such as “Avatar,” “Superman” and “Jurassic World” on the slate, as well as films from acclaimed filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho and Paul Thomas Anderson.

But more labor strife — IATSE is in the midst of contract talks that will run at least into May, with Teamsters, the Basic Crafts and the Animation Guild still to come — could upend theaters’ economic recovery, the exhibitors said, as could more industry consolidation.

For now, to boost their bottom lines theater owners are largely focused on trying to diversify their release slates, and leaning into premium formats like Imax.

“The strikes slowed the flow of titles coming through the production pipeline, but we’ve seen more than enough evidence and heard enough from the people we are working with in production, distribution and exhibition to know that the fundamentals of our industry are sound,” said John Fithian, former president of the National Association of Theater Owners and founding partner of the exhibition consulting firm The Fithian Group.

Those fundamentals will be discussed on Tuesday by Fithian’s successor at NATO, Michael O’Leary, in his first keynote speech at CinemaCon. The new president of the theater trade organization plans to invoke the pop culture phenomenon of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” two films that combined for $2.3 billion at the global box office and whose same-day launch propelled theaters to their best weekend of business since the opening of “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019.

Merger danger

The last few years have shown that a huge hit like “Barbie” or “Top Gun: Maverick” can lift the theater business to great heights, but a months-long slump soon follows. Recent March hits like “Dune: Part Two” and “Kung Fu Panda 4” have helped end a rough winter for the box office that lacked a massive moneymaker like “Avatar: The Way of Water” or “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and was exacerbated by release delays from studios that did not want to promote films while actors were on strike.

The next big threat to theaters’ economic recovery may not be a virus or a strike, but mergers and acquisitions bringing consolidation that would further shrink the number of competitors in Hollywood.

“It’s simple to me: We need more studios,” Etter said. “If the film industry consolidates down to three or four major studios, the quality of the films isn’t going to go up. It just means less studios putting out films in theaters, even if there are still some independent distributors in business.”

Right now Paramount has received multiple acquisition offers, including from private equity group Apollo Global Management and from one of the studio’s production partners, Skydance Media. But the company might not be alone. Disney has been at the center of multiple M&A rumors in recent years, and Warner Bros. Discovery only recently abandoned a bid to merge with Paramount.

But consolidation has already had an impact on post-COVID slates via Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, a studio that released 18 or more films each year prior to that merger during the 2010s.

Some of those Fox films, like the $70 million-budgeted Jennifer Lawrence spy thriller “Red Sparrow,” have been deemed theatrically unviable due to their mid-to-high level budgets and have largely become the domain of streamers like Netflix. But theaters are in a situation where they need any and all films that studios can provide.

The transformation of Fox to the Disney-owned label 20th Century Studios has led to less volume for exhibitors, even as Disney insiders tell TheWrap that the studio is exploring ways to increase its theatrical output with non-franchise titles such as 20th Century’s recently announced Bruce Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

If another studio like Paramount becomes the next domino to fall in the M&A chain, it increases the likelihood of more frequent box office slumps due to a lower volume of releases.

A new normal forms

With the future of these potential M&A talks so nebulous, all theaters can do is take advantage of the release valves available to them. Some of the lost Fox output has been replaced by streamers like Apple, which has partnered with legacy studios to release films like “Napoleon” and the upcoming “Fly Me to the Moon.” And Amazon has continued to release films in theaters through its recent acquisition of MGM. Independent distributors like A24 and Neon have found a foothold with a new generation of discerning moviegoers, and Angel Studios is seeking to turn its landmark success last year distributing “Sound of Freedom”into a sustained presence at the box office.

Theaters are also searching for various forms of alternative offerings, from concert films to sports broadcasts to independently released international films like “RRR” and “Godzilla Minus One.” The search for theaters to fill in the gaps left behind by the big studios on the slate has made distributors like Fathom Events into a force in niche markets, and the alternative sphere hit its peak last year as “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” became the highest-grossing concert film ever.

“There is a real hunger for non-studio, independent product,” said Patrick Corcoran, founding partner of The Fithian Group. “The major studios account for 85% of our annual box office, but if you look at the most successful overseas markets right now, you see markets that are diversified, that are not entirely dependent upon that sort of global type of title that we are mostly dependent on. They have strong local film markets that are actually driving a more profitable market than we’re seeing in the U.S.”

That diversity can come from the distributor or from another sector of entertainment, but it can also come simply from a diversity of narratives. At CinemaCon on Monday, Focus Features distribution chief Lisa Bunnell and Neon distribution chief Elissa Federoff joined National Amusements marketing VP Rebecca Stein and B&B Theaters president Brock Bagby for a panel in which they discussed what they needed from the other side in order for studios and theaters to better collaborate on promoting original films with smaller budgets like “The Holdovers” to audiences.

For her part, Bunnell asked the exhibitors in attendance for patience when it comes to when movies from specialty distributors come to theaters. Films like “The Holdovers” often have a slow nationwide rollout to allow word-of-mouth to build, and that means that some theaters may have to wait longer for a hot title that got big reviews at Toronto or Venice longer than they may like.

She also noted that when those specialty and small-budget films hit theaters, they need as much promotion as possible on theater chains’ websites and social media platforms as well as full theatrical support. Bunnell warned that she’s seen instances where a specialty release loses critical weekend screen times to alternative content like UFC pay-per-views or to add more screen times to a wide release tentpole that is in high demand.

“If you don’t nurture and take care of these movies, then we can never go wider with them,” Bunnell said. “Please be patient with us, because we go slow so that we can build a movie.”

In response, Stein suggested that studios offer more and earlier opportunities for exhibitors to screen films so they can have a better idea of how they can promote the film to their customers and collaborate with studios in how they can support the film. She told Bunnell that “The Holdovers” was one of her favorite films of the year, but felt like she would have been better prepared to sell the film to National Amusements’ loyalty program members if she had been able to see the film sooner.

“We may not get [the film in theaters] earlier, but we need to see it sooner. I know when I see something at CinemaCon, it gets me excited and it sticks with me. It helps when I’m able to see it earlier and not just a week and a half beforehand at a trade screening,” Stein said.

Premium rush

While the Hollywood landscape that shapes the theatrical release slate continues to face new changes, there is one trend in exhibition that will definitely play a major factor: Premium formats.

In 2023, Imax took in $1.06 billion in global box office revenue, making it the second-highest year in the company’s history. Dolby, which offers its own premium format screens at select AMC Theaters locations, had a big presence on the CinemaCon trade show floor as it announced plans to offer its Dolby Vision projectors a la carte to theaters that have auditoriums already equipped with the company’s Atmos sound system. It’s an option the company hopes will expand its footprint at multiplexes across the country.

“The movie theater business is one that always requires reinvestment,” said Paramount domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson. “If a theater can’t keep its picture and sound quality up, it should be closed. Nobody wants to go to a run-down theater.”

Whether it’s because they offer the biggest screens possible for the biggest blockbusters or they simply serve as a guarantee of quality for moviegoers burned by a bad experience at a theater, premium formats are becoming the next edge that theaters can have over their competition.

“I remember when stadium style seating was first introduced to theaters, and the ones that adopted that early in the auditoriums got more business than those that didn’t,” said Etter. “Then we had the addition of recliners, and that became the competitive edge. Now it is premium formats. If you have those, you’re going to have a strong chance of selling out those auditoriums on a big opening weekend.”

Indeed, that was the case with the recent release of films like “Oppenheimer” and “Dune: Part Two,” which were such a hot ticket for Imax that theaters had to schedule screenings as early as 4 a.m. While that level of demand only comes along a handful of times a year if at all, it’s an example of how premium formats, with their surcharges, are a way for theaters to make a little extra from a popular film. They can also benefit from premium concessions and collectible popcorn buckets. The extra revenue can be marginal, but it allows theaters to profit more from the boom periods and stem the tide for when the next slump rolls around.

“In the 50s and 60s, we had giant single screen auditoriums,” mused Etter, recalling the days of the Orpheum theater circuit and locales like the famous Cinerama Dome near Hollywood Boulevard.

“Those auditoriums had state-of-the-art technology. It was innovation for Hollywood. It built Hollywood. Then those single-screen theaters made way for multiplexes. But now it is the biggest screens in those multiplexes, the Imaxes and other [Premium Large Formats], that are the hottest ticket. In a way, what’s old is new again.”

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By the way, the title is an old-school kaiju title implying a team-up. However, it’s also modern online slang implying a “ship” or a romantic relationship between two characters. It’s legitimate in terms of kaiju franchise lingo. It’s also a good-natured nod to those who would like to see King Kong and Godzilla be more than, to quote the Michael Jackson/Stevie Wonder duet, just good friends.

The trailer gives us a sweep from modern times back to the pyramids, with voiceover intoning, “For most of human civilization, we believed that life could only exist on the surface of our planet.”

“What else were we wrong about?”

In an eerie introduction to the underground world of monsters, we follow our human characters down under the Earth’s crust, as we hear, “This world has more secrets than we could possibly imagine.”

We see another warlike ape, with an entire civilization appearing to back him up, ready to attack. As we hear, “Kong can’t stop this on his own,” we get the response: “He won’t be alone.”

That’s when Godzilla awakens, breaking through the nice — trading in blue radiation for pink this time around.

Adam Wingard returns to direct this installment. Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Kaylee Hottle will reprise their roles from “Godzilla vs. Kong.” Wingard is also set to reunite with his “The Guest” leading man Dan Stevens, as well as Fala Chen and Rachel House. Simon Barrett is writing the screenplay. Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod, Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni will produce.

“Godzilla Vs. Kong” was the opening shot in the slow COVID-era theatrical recovery. It debuted in theaters and on HBO Max just as vaccines were being distributed. WB (and the entire theatrical industry) pitched it as a definitive “This is what we go to the movies for!” blockbuster.

It was also one of the big COVID-era releases that arguably performed better at the box office than it might have had it opened in conventional circumstances. It was coming off the underwhelming “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” Most in-development sequels to flop predecessors don’t magically hit paydirt next time out.

Yes, the hook of Godzilla throwing down against King Kong was more general audience-appealing than Godzilla versus King Ghidorah. Still, there was a strong possibility that “Godzilla Vs. Kong” might have taken a tumble on par with “Justice League” (-25% from “Batman v Superman”) and earned under $300 million. Instead, the film earned $100 million domestically and $470 million worldwide, saving the movies.

Now the MonsterVerse has goodwill from the last installment. Moreover, Wingard’s ’80s action movie himbo version of King Kong is a proven crowd-pleaser, returning in the new trailer with his axe from his Godzilla confrontation — and a giant mechanical glove that looks like something ripped off a Transformer.

Will “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” be a Shane Black-style action comedy with the dinosaur and the monkey teaming up to stop drug runners? Probably not, even if it’s what we deserve.

Legendary and WB have played their big trump card, namely Kong and Zilla beating the hell out of each other. What else do they have beyond more of that, and will audiences care to find out? Stay tuned for when the film opens on April 12, 2024.

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