Industry News
by saidiontheside

cinemacon news

Hello everyone,

This post is dedicated to the great Val Kilmer, who passed away on April 1st (no, not an April Fools joke).

(Disney’s entire 2025 lineup from Disney/Marvel/Pixar/Fox Studios)

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go to CinemaCon this year but here are the updates I read about….

The debate about making the exclusive theatrical window longer seemed to be a hot topic at CinemaCon this week.  Cinema United (formerly named National Association of Theater Owners) and some movie theater owners say they’d like the exclusive theatrical window to increase to at least 45 days (6 weeks)….

… but the Universal distribution chief later said that “Wicked” had made over $100 million in POD sales while still playing in movie theaters….

… after that the head of AMC said that 3 out of the 6 major studios have agreed to extending the exclusive theatrical release window to 45 days.

Sony

  • Sony also announced on Monday night that Sam Mendes is working on 4 different biopics about the Beatles which will all be released in 2028.  The 4 movies will star Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon.

Lionsgate

  • Lionsgate announced the film of “The Hunger Games” prequel book “Sunrise on the Reaping” will be released in November 20, 2026.
  • Although “Now You See Me 3” – now called “Now You See Me,  Now You Don’t” – won’t be released until Nov 14 of this year, Lionsgate annouced that they are already working on a 4th movie for the franchinse
  • Lionsgate is working on a few movies for the “John Wick” franchise after the spinoff movie “Ballerina” this summer, there will also be an animated John Wick prequel movie, another spinoff movie about the blind assasin Caine seen in “John Wick 4”, and they’re of course working on a “John Wick 5” movie.  No release dates set for any of the movies – other than this summers “Ballerina”.

Warner Bros

  • According to reports, the Warner Bros presentation didn’t announce much news.  They showed footage of their upcoming movies like “Superman”, “Final Destination Bloodlines”, the first 10 minutes of “F1” (the Apple movie that Warner Bros is releasing), “The Bride”, “Wepons”, and Paul Thomas Andersons “One Battle After Another”.  They had a lot of stars and directors on stage including Leonardo DiCaprio (for “One Battle After Another”), Maggie Gyllenhaal (writer/director of “The Bride”) and the cast and director of “Superman”.

Universal:

  • Universal/Dreamworks  had a screening of the upcoming live action “How to Train Your Dragon” movie. 
  • Later on Wednesday, they showed a lot of extended clips and new trailers for their upcoming movies including “Jurrassic World Rebirth” (coming this summer), “Five Night at Freddies 2” (coming this fall), Megan 2.0 (coming this summer), , “The Black Phone 2” (coming this fall), and the Wicked part 2 “Wicked for Good” coming this December.  The also announced the official title of some upcoming movies like Yorgos Lanthimos’ next movie “Bugonia” starring Emma Stone (coming at the end of the year), Wes Andersons next movie “The Phoenician Scheme” (coming this summer), an animated feature film of “Gabbys Dollhouse – The Movie” with the voices of Kristen Wigg and Gloria Espefan (coming this September) from Dreamworks animation, and  “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” (coming this September).  The head of Universals domestic distribution also talked about the next Christopher Nolan “The Odyssey” coming next summer but didn’t show any footage.
  • They only news item was that the live action sequel “How To Train Your Dragon 2” will be released on June 11, 2027.

MGM/Amazon Studios

  • Amazon/MGM in their first big presentation at CinemaCon promised that by 2027 they’d release 15 feature films a year in movie theaters.
  • The other big news from MGM/Amazon is that producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman are currently in London starting to work on the next Bond movie which they say will be a “fresh exhilarating new chapter”
  • They also showed footage or previews from some their upcoming movies including “The Accountant 2”, “After the Hunt” starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, “Project Hail Mary” starring Ryan Gosling, and their “Masters of the Universe” reboot which is coming summer 2026.

Paramount:

  • Paramount showed off footage from their “Running Man” reboot, their “Naked Gun” which has a brand new trailer, another movie in the “Spongebob” franchise – “The Spongebob Squarepants: Search for SquarePants” and Tom Cruise praised his costar Val Kilmer and then introduced some footage of this summers sequel “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning”.

Disney

  • Disney also didn’t make many announcements but they showed a lot of footage from their upcoming movies including the sequel “Freakier Friday” coming this summer, The Bruce Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere”, the part live action/part CGI “Lilo and Stich” coming this summer, the upcoming Marvel movies “Thunderbolts*” and “Fantastic Four: First Steps” (the latter will feature a female playing the Silver Surfer), the sequel “Tron:Ares” coming this fall, “Zootopia 2” coming at the end of this year, and “Avatar Fire and Ash” coming this December.

So, overall there wasn’t a lot of news but there were a lot of celebrities on stage at CinemaCon this year.