Napoleon, robots and Ryan Gosling(s) — the splashiest sneak peeks from CinemaCon
Eli Glasner | CBC News | Posted: May 2, 2023 8:00 AM | Last Updated: May 2, 2023
Hollywood studios gathered in Vegas to tempt theatre owners with parade of big-screen promises
In Caesars Palace, past the tourists in flip flops playing black jack under the crystal chandeliers, there's a convention where Hollywood studios and stars come to share exclusive previews with the audience that matters the most — movie theatre owners.
CinemaCon is not Comic-Con. The location is Las Vegas, not San Diego, and the dress code is much more business casual. This is all about the business of getting cinema fans back into movie theatres.
After a few fallow years during the pandemic, the box office is coming back to life. Hits like Super Mario Bros. have audiences returning to theatres. While tickets sales have yet to reach the heady post-pandemic levels of 2019, a cavalcade of studio executives and Hollywood stars came to Vegas to share trailers, exclusive scenes and screenings.
Here's what stood out from five days of CinemaCon's coming attractions.
Sony Pictures
The evening began with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence on the set of Bad Boys 4, joking about why they couldn't make the trek to Vegas. But it was the follow-up to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse that showed the most promise. Creating a sequel to one of the greatest Spider-Man stories ever told is no small feat, but the 14 minute excerpt of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse showed the strength of their characters.
With the same exuberant pop-art style, audiences watched Miles Morales hanging with Spider-Gwen. There's something big happening somewhere in the Spider-Verse and Miles wants to help, but Gwen seems distracted. Although the sequel has three entirely different directors from the 2018 hit, with Shameik Moore and Hallie Steinfeld returning as Miles and Gwen, Spidey's journey seems on solid ground.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens June 2.
Sony closed out the night with an exclusive preview of a scene from director Ridley Scott's Napoleon. No stranger to large scale bloodshed, the Gladiator director shared with the crowd a brutal confrontation between French forces and an opposing army set on a frozen lake. The audience didn't hear much from Joaquin Phoenix as the mercurial French commander. Instead, the focus was on Napoleon's tactical brilliance as Scott captures the chaos when the army is lured into an icy trap.
Napoleon opens Nov. 22.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. gave the CinemaCon crowd an advance look at Barbie as Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie, America Ferrera and director Greta Gerwig all strolled on stage. The film about the life of the iconic plastic doll is an interesting departure for Gerwig, also the director of Lady Bird and Little Women.
While Gosling was teased about getting into character as Ken, the Canadian actor fessed up, saying, "Until this point, I knew Ken from [afar], I didn't know Ken from within, I doubted my Ken-ergy."
Gerwig spoke about her influences for Barbie, citing immersive musicals such as The Wizard of Oz and disco because of the feeling of a world where people just get up and dance. Warner Bros. also debuted a new extended trailer, which gave a few hints at how Gerwig (and her partner, Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote the screenplay) will spin the doll into a full-length feature. It begins with Barbie (Robbie) in her perfect, pink plastic paradise. Slowly, the cheerful blond begins to question if there's more to life than picnics and beach parties. If Gerwig can deliver on the zany concept, Barbie could be a subversive summer smash.
Barbie opens July 21.
Last year, the first public screening of Top Gun: Maverick had the conventioneers buzzing, but this time it was The Flash. The super hero movie starring Ezra Miller is an important turning point for the future of Warner Bros.' DC comic-book properties, but the various charges and allegations swirling around Miller have cast a shadow over the film.
On stage, Miller's name was barely mentioned. Instead Warner executives let the film speak for itself, presenting an exclusive rough cut for the CinemaCon crowd, who ate it up. The Flash delivers a basket of Easter eggs for fans, anchored by Miller playing two very different roles. While questions remain how the studio will navigate the release, it's one of the most promising DC films in recent memory.
The Flash opens June 16.
Disney
The theme for the Disney presentation for your humble entertainment correspondent may well have been "overcoming skepticism." For the past decade, much of Disney's success has been finding new ways to reinvent and repurpose its bottomless carpetbag pop-culture properties.
The show started with Melissa McCarthy talking about her role in The Little Mermaid. The new live-action version of the 1989 classic cartoon features Halle Bailey as Ariel and McCarthy as vampy Ursula. After McCarthy discussed playing the "dishy" villain, the Vegas crowd was treated to Ursula's big number, Poor Unfortunate Souls. Not all cartoons are meant for live-action, but director Rob Marshall's version makes full use of the aquatic environment. Watching Ursula's tentacles undulate as the water shimmers, it's easy to see how the adaptation will find its sea legs.
The Little Mermaid opens May 26.
Part two of the Movies We Didn't Need parade was a tease from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Yes, Harrison Ford is 80 and I certainly didn't think he needed to pick up the bullwhip one last time. But that was before audiences were treated to a chase sequence in Tangier, Morocco. Watching Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge careen down alleyways in a tuk-tuk while chasing a Nazi, the old feeling was back. Who knows, maybe the 5th time is the charm?
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens June 30.
The most exciting presentation of the day was for a film no one expected. The Creator is an original piece of sci-fi from Rogue One director Gareth Edwards. Searchlight Pictures debuted a trailer that had the press section gaga over what appears to be a story about a man (John David Washington) protecting a robot boy in a world where A.I. and humans are at war. Prescient? For sure, but also a welcome blast of fresh storytelling in a forest of franchises.
The Creator opens Sept. 29.
Universal
Universal brought the big guns to CinemaCon, beginning with the biggest of them all, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer about the father of the atomic bomb. The extended teaser wowed the crowd with a story equal parts earth shaking and intimate. As J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the Manhattan Project, Cillian Murphy's stark, hollow face appears absolutely haunted. The footage shown also hinted at the paranoia surrounding the war project as the Americans raced to be the first with the bomb, with Robert Downey Jr. appearing as a politician dismayed about leaks.
On stage, Nolan described Oppenheimer as the most important man who ever lived. Indeed, the story seems engineered for the big screen and the Oscars, a vivid spectacle with horrifying consequences.
Oppenheimer opens July 21.
If that wasn't enough, Ryan Gosling returned to CinemaCon for the debut of The Fall Guy, a new movie also starring Gosling and Emily Blunt, from stuntman-turned-director David Leitch. After a high-energy demonstration by the 87North stunt team, Leitch spoke about wanting to make a movie that gives stunt performers the respect they deserve. While Gosling is playing a stuntman named Colt Seavers (the same as the 1980s TV show) the tone of the trailer suggests something akin to The Player meets The Nice Guys, a satirical look at the lives of the professionals who suffer to make the movie stars look good, from the director who got his start as Brad Pitt's body double.
The Fall Guy opens March 1, 2024.
Universal finished the night with the first look at the still-in-production adaptation of Wicked. With Ariana Grande as Glinda, the future good witch, and Cynthia Erivo as the green-skinned Elphaba, Wicked has the chops to cast a serious spell.
Wicked opens Nov. 24, 2024.
Paramount
In one incarnation or another, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been around since the eighties, but executive producer Seth Rogen thinks he's found a way to re-energize the property by casting actual teenagers as the turtles.
The exuberance in the extended trailer shown in Vegas was abundant, complimented by a sketchy, electric animation style. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is just the latest in a new wave of animated films building on the expressive style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Similar to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Mutant Mayhem has a painterly, almost graffiti-influenced style that fits the turtle bros' vibe.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem opens Aug. 4.
Sticking with animation, Paramount is also bringing another familiar brand back. With gasps and cheers from the crowd, Rihanna (now in her third trimester) graced the Colosseum stage to announce her role in the 2025 film The Smurf Movie. Not only will she be playing Smurfette, but Rihanna is also on board as producer and will be contributing original music to the live-action/animation hybrid.
The Smurf Movie opens Feb. 14, 2025.
On the other end of the cinematic spectrum, CinemaCon played host to one of the true defenders of film, Martin Scorsese. Similar to Napoleon, Apple Original Films is also mounting a theatrical release for his widely anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon. The trailer shown exclusively at CinemaCon takes place in the 1920s as members of the Indigenous oil-rich Osage Nation begin dying mysteriously. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest, a man in a relationship with a woman from the Osage Nation community. While the themes of love, loyalty and greed are familiar threads for Scorsese, the Oklahoma setting is new terrain in a number of ways.
At a lunch where Scorsese was honoured with the Legends of Cinema award, the director spoke about how he and DiCaprio listened to members of the Osage Nation who spoke about how their families had suffered. "The only way to do it was to be there," said Scorsese, describing how they filmed in Oklahoma. Although it was quite the transition for the legendary New Yorker, "There were prairies out there," he joked. "Wild horses. Coyotes."
Killers of the Flower Moon opens in select theatres Oct. 6.
Lionsgate
While the theatre owners seemed most excited about news of the upcoming Hunger Games prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes the audience was treated to full screening of the upcoming summer comedy Joy Ride. The raunchy and most-certainly R-rated road movie finds a group of Chinese American friends going to China in search of a parent. The film, which already earned raves at the South By Southwest Festival, had the crowd roaring, in particular a sequence with the friends trapped on a train with a very nervous drug smuggler. Joy Ride could be the new Bridesmaids.
Joy Ride opens July 7.