CinemaCon: Paramount, Warner and Disney Are Placing Big Bets in Las Vegas

It’s time once again for movie theater owners, from the smallest family-owned arthouse to the multinational chains, to gather in Las Vegas for CinemaCon, the trade show held by the National Association of Theater Owners where studios bring out their distribution chiefs and biggest stars to offer sneak peeks at the films to come this year.

Along with serving as a chance for networking, vendor deals and marketing of upcoming films, CinemaCon also serves as a pep rally for the industry. Every year, big-name execs like NATO CEO John Fithian and Sony Pictures’ Tom Rothman take the stage at Caesars Palace to extoll the bright future for movie exhibition and to denounce the naysayers who claim the industry will soon be rendered extinct.

More is at stake this year than just cheerleading for theaters’ survival, though, as the industry grapples with the increasingly intertwined nature of theatrical exhibition and streaming success. The bets studios like Warner Bros., Paramount and Disney are placing in Las Vegas are about more than just box office.

While ticket sales are still not back to what they were before the pandemic shut theaters down worldwide and there were months-long droughts for theaters in 2022, films like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and now “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” have given reason to hope that movie theaters will not only survive but thrive into the future, especially with a loaded summer on the horizon.

So with that enduring spirit of stubborn optimism that burns at the heart of the movie theater business, what else can we expect?

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A party for the pendulum swing to theatrical

Last year, Fithian, Rothman and other executives onstage boasted about how day-and-date models like the one Warner Bros. used in 2021 with the soon-to-be-rebranded HBO Max would not work economically in the longterm. Expect them this year to make speeches that basically amount to “Told you so!”

While there have been a handful of movies to try the day-and-date model in the past year, like Universal/Blumhouse’s “Halloween Ends,” studios as a whole are renewing the push on releasing movies in theaters in order to raise their profile when they get released for home viewing. Just in the past month, “Evil Dead Rise” became the third Warner Bros. film this year to switch from a streaming exclusive release to theatrical, while Amazon Studios, at the urging of their late distribution chief Erik Lomis, gave the sports drama “Air” a similar release shift.

With reports that Amazon and Apple are set to invest further in theatrical releases, there are signs that the number of films released in theaters will soon get back to pre-pandemic levels. Expect NATO and the studios to tout that stat all week long.

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Tom Cruise will be hailed as a conquering hero

It hasn’t been confirmed yet whether the star of “Top Gun: Maverick” will be present at CinemaCon or if he will do a video apologizing for not being able to show up while doing some crazy stunt for the next “Mission: Impossible” film. Either way, Tom Cruise is going to be the toast of the party in Vegas.

CinemaCon hosted the first public screening of “Top Gun: Maverick” last year, even before its glitzy gala premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. From there, “Maverick” became the top grossing film of summer 2022 and a movie that everyone in Hollywood, from AMC CEO Adam Aron to Steven Spielberg, declared was the savior of cinemas.

And guess what? Cruise might be the king of summer 2023 as well, as the first part of “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” will be released this July. After Paramount’s domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson hails both Cruise and the theater owners in attendance for making “Top Gun: Maverick” the studio’s highest-grossing film since “Titanic,” expect a sneak peek of that action film to be the main event of Paramount’s presentation, whether Cruise is there in person to show it off or not.

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“The Flash” gets ready for its run

Can the biggest DC movie of 2023 — possibly the biggest superhero movie of the year, period — get the same bump from CinemaCon that “Top Gun: Maverick” got? Warner Bros. seems to believe it can, as exhibitors will get the first public screening of the time-warping film that will see Michael Keaton return as Batman after more than 30 years.

While the presence of the repeatedly arrested Ezra Miller as the movie’s eponymous hero has led to plenty of online scrutiny, Warner insiders have told TheWrap that the studio is very optimistic this film will be a smash hit. New DC Studios chief James Gunn called it one of the “greatest superhero movies ever” before unveiling his plans for the upcoming DC reboot.

Given the recent struggles Warner has faced with its merger with Discovery, and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” flopping at the box office, this summer needs to be a fruitful one for the studio. While other films like “Blue Beetle” and “Barbie” are on its slate, “The Flash” is the film that needs to deliver the most, and winning over the theater owners that will be playing it on their screens would be a good start towards that goal.

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Disney begins its road back

Not everything is bleak in the Magic Kingdom. The $2.3 billion box office bonanza of “Avatar: The Way of Water” is exactly why Disney bought 20th Century Fox four years ago. But the slate Disney shows at CinemaCon will come from other IP divisions that have taken a hit from their late-2010s days of domination and are looking for a rebound.

Marvel Studios, which may soon replace Jonathan Majors with a new actor to play Kang the Conqueror, is coming off of its biggest box-office bust with “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania,” which failed to gross $500 million worldwide. If “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” doesn’t make as much as its predecessors in 2014 and 2017 the decline of the MCU may soon turn into a freefall.

The state of Disney’s animated studios isn’t quite as bad, but both Walt Disney Animation and Pixar are bruised after “Lightyear” and “Strange World” became high-profile bombs last year. It’s likely that neither Pixar’s “Elemental” nor Disney’s “Wish” will unseat “Super Mario Bros.” as the top animation hit of 2023, but both need to perform like past original titles from these studios — think “Moana” ($622 million in 2016) — to get Disney back on the up and up. That will start with a sneak peek at CinemaCon.

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No custody papers this time, right?

CinemaCon usually has some surprises for the attendees, like Dwayne Johnson making an unexpected appearance, but nothing could have prepared anyone for the bizarre moment last year when Olivia Wilde was served custody papers when she came out onstage to present her film “Don’t Worry Darling.”

In hindsight, it was just the first of many bizarre incidents that befell the ill-fated Warner Bros. thriller, but sources at CinemaCon say security will be increased to make sure nothing like that happens again.

Which isn’t to say that there might not be some unexpected hot lines from one of the A-listers showing up to Caesars. Take 2018, when Helen Mirren said with an impish grin “I love Netflix… but f–k Netflix” as the streamer was beginning its practice of releasing its top films in theaters for just a week. And Paramount distribution chief Chris Aronson hasn’t been afraid to make some silly entrances himself, whether it involves doing a stunt with Johnny Knoxville to promote “Jackass Forever” or stumbling to the stage after an all-night party with Deadpool and Hugh Jackman.

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