Day 3
Disney Presentation
The first thing I attended on Wed morning was the Disney presentation. They first showed a montage for their 100th anniversary and displayed the brand-new Disney logo with “100 Years” on it. Then they announced that for the first time since 2019, all 7 studios within Disney will be releasing a movie this year.
Marvel – first showed a funny clip from “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” and then they showed the new trailer (which actually was released about a week before CinemaCon) for “The Marvels”.
Disney (animated) – They announced the cast for the Walt Disney animated movie coming out at the end of this year called “Wish”. Chris Pine will be the voice of King Magnifico and Ariana DeBose will play the main character Asha. They showed a clip of the main character singing what will probably be this years hit song from the movie “So I Made This Wish”.
Disney (live action) – Disney live action first talked about the live action “The Little Mermaid” coming Memorial Day weekend. Melissa McCarthy, who plays Ursula, came out and said what an honor it was to play “..one of Disney’s most delicious and iconic villains. You can’t help but love her.” Then she introduced a clip of one of the songs she sings in the movie “Poor Unfortunate Souls”.
After that they showed an extended clip and a new trailer for “The Haunted Mansion” movie coming out this August.
Pixar – Next up was a 3D showing (the only 3D presentation at the show) of the first few minutes of Pixars summer movie “Elementals”.
Lucasfilm – Harrison Ford did a funny video introduction for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” saying “Hello CinemaCon! Playing Indiana Jones all these years has meant the world to me. (The movies) have adventure and heart — and for some reason snakes.” Then they showed a extended chase scene from the movie.
20th Century – They showed a work-in-progress trailer for writer/director Gareth Edwards sci fi film coming out this fall “The Creator”. Later I heard that the movie was formerly called “True Love” and was formerly scheduled for Oct but will now be released a couple weeks earlier in September.
Then they showed a new trailer for the third Hercule Poirot movie directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh called “A Haunting in Venice”
Searchlight Pictures – They showed a trailer of “Next Goal Wins” directed by Taika Waititiand starring Michael Fassbender based on the true story of the American Samoa soccer team which once lost a match 31-0.
Best Moment: Both the scenes from “Elementals” (although I don’t understand why it was in 3D) and the scenes from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” looked really good.
Screening – The Boogeyman
The Disney presentation concluded with the screening of “The Boogeyman” which 20th Century Studios will release this fall. I watched about 10 minutes of it. It didn’t look that good to me, so I left. I haven’t read anything online about CinemaCon praising that movie like there were for “The Flash”.
Universal Presentation
On Wed afternoon there was a 2nd studio presentation. They started with a montage of several directors – including Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan – talking about how much they love the movie theater experience.
Then they thanked the audience of the overwhelming success of “The Super Mario Bros Movie” the biggest box office of the year (so far) and the first movie to pass $1 BILLION worldwide in 2023 and the fifth movie to pass $1 BILLION since the pandemic started.
Christopher Nolan came out to talk about his movie coming out this summer “Oppenheimer”. It’s interesting to note that he said the movie will be playing in IMAX 70mm film, 70mm film, 35mm film, AND Dolby Vision and other premium format screens. Since he’s a big fan of film, he’s never mentioned Dolby Vision or other premium format screens before. It could mean that the movie won’t be playing on that many screens on film. Then he showed an extended trailer for the upcoming movie.
Then Chris Meledandri, the head of Illumination, (which made “Super Mario Bros”) came out to introduce their next movie “Migration” coming this Christmas. They showed an extended scene for the movie.
After that, Will Ferrell came out to introduce a clip from an R rated live action talking dog movie called “Strays”. He was carrying the dog named Sophie that he does the voice for in the movie. They showed a couple scenes from the movie which has the dog’s owner playing a game called “fetch and f**k”. His owner drives the dog very far away and throws a stick. The dog goes to get the stick as the owner drives away. When the dog returns home with the stick the owner says “F**K”. After the owner finally drives far enough away that the dog can’t find his way back, the dog meets up with a bunch of other strays who do whatever they want (think of it like a R rated version of what Simba did with Timon and Pumba in “The Lion King”). However, the dogs main goal is to return home and “…bite the owners d**k off…”
Blumehouse came out next to show the first footage for “The Exorcist: Believer”. The director who directed the recent “Halloween” movies will now be switching to “The Exorcist” (which apparently switched from Warner Bros which released the original movie and a couple sequels to Universal). Similar to the recent “Halloween” trilogy, it looks like they have more than one movie planned for “The Exorcist”.
Next up was Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick coming onstage to introduce a new trailer for DreamWorks 3rd “Trolls” movie called “Trolls Band Together” coming this Christmas (which is sort of weird since “Migration” is coming out around the same time at the end of this year).
Another Dreamworks sequel came next with Jack Black coming on stage to talk a little bit about “Kung Fu Panda 4” which won’t be released until the start of 2024.
After that it was Focus Features turn to take the stage. They showed the previously released trailer for this summer’s Wes Anderson movie “Asteroid City”
Then they showed not-finished trailers for 3 movies coming this fall. First was Alexander Paynes “The Holdovers” which stars Paul Giamatti as the teacher that stays with the students who don’t go home for the 1970 Christmas break. The movie comes out this November. Second was Ethan Coens “Drive Away Dolls”. The first comedy movie that Ethan Coen made without his brother Joel. It stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as two friends who go on an unusual road trip. Third was the almost finished trailer for “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” where the family goes to Greece where they try to reconnect to their roots.
After that, 4 members of the cast of “Fast X” came out onstage. They talked about the history of the “Fast and Furious” franchise” and then they introduced star Vin Diesel and LEFT THE STAGE (they came out just to introduce him?). Vin Diesel talked about how much he loves coming to CinemaCon “..more than going to the Oscars” (maybe he’d feel differently if he got a nomination….). He also said that this summers “Fast X” is part 1 of the final movies.
The last two things that Universal presented were for movies coming out next year. First up was “The Fall Guy”. They had a bunch of stunt performers do some stunts and tricks across the stage and then they had director David Leitch – who used to be a stunt man before he became a director – come out and talk about how all the stunts in the movie are real stunts. Some of the stunt people performing on the stage did stunts in the movie. There were so many stunts on the stage that the stars Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling were afraid to come out on the stage. They eventually came out and then the introduced a not-completed version of the trailer.
The final thing they showed was a little behind the scenes footage of a movie still in production. The film version of the musical “Wicked” which stars and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo as Glinda and Elphaba. This movie will also be divided into 2 parts with part 1 coming out Christmas 2024 and part 2 coming in 2025.
Best Moment: Will Ferrell came out holding the dog he does the voice for in the movie “Strays” he kept arguing with the cameraman for equal time because they showed a close-up of the dog more than they showed Will Ferrell. “Hey camera guy, one shot of her and one shot of me…”, “Let me read off my IMDb credits and compare them to hers….she was in Strays, Santa Paws 2..”, “By the time that Strays 3 comes along we’re probably going to have to recast with someone younger.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 