Thirty Minute Reviews: Week of 4/15/2024 (CinemaCon Wrap Up)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3P2oixfPDsdwAovCxnrfin

This week marked the end of the 2024 edition of CinemaCon, the big annual event where film studios and distributors present NATO (the National Association of Theater Owners, not the member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) with their upcoming slate of films for the next year or so. Because this is the majority of the news this week comes from CinemaCon, we will be shaking up the order of operations this week and be covering all that at once last.

This Week In Podcasts

We have quite a busy week ahead of us:

• 4/15 (PM): Beware of Spoilers will cover The Sympathizer Episode 1
• 4/16: The Backlog Files will cover Pokemon Coliseum
• 4/18 (AM): Beware of Spoilers will cover The Bad Batch Season 3 Episode 13
• 4/18 (PM): Beware of Spoilers will cover The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
• 4/19 (AM): Beware of Spoilers will cover X-Men '97 Episode 6
• 4/20 (AM): Beware of Spoilers will cover Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver
• 4/21 (AM): Beware of Spoilers will cover The Girls on the Bus Episode 7

As always subscribe below for email updates for all of this and more!

Winners From The Indie Space

Last week marked the end of the Annapolis Film Festival in Annapolis, Maryland and the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans. Congratulations to the winners in these festivals!

Annapolis Film Festival:

• Best Feature Film: Fresh Kills: Jennifer Esposito of CBS's Blue Bloods makes her writing/directing debut in this film about a young woman who discovers her father is an emerging mafia kingpin in 1980s Staten Island.
• Best Feature Documentary: Mediha: This documentary follows a teenage Yazidi girl who attempts to rebuild her life following years of enslavement at the hands of Isis. Directed by Hasan Oswald.
• Best Short Film: Camping in Paradise: This short follows a philosopher and his girlfriend who are forced to spend the night at a nudist camp when their car breaks down. Directed by Eirik Tveiten. This short also won the Audience Award for Best Short Film.
• Best Documentary Short: The Test: This short documentary follows a Ghanaian immigrant who prepares to take the United States Citizenship Test.
• Audience Award for Best Feature: Suze: Michaela Watkins stars as Suze, an empty-nester who ends up in an unlikely maternal relationship with her daughter's ex-boyfriend. Directed by Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart.
• Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: Call Me Dancer: This documentary follows Manesh, a breakdancer from India who is mentored by a 70-year-old ballet master from Israel. Directed by Leslie Shampaine.
• Audience Award for Best Documentary Short: You Will Not Replace Us: This short proposes ideas on how the Black and Jewish Communities can come together and support each other. Directed by Joshua Greene and Luke Harris.

Overlook Film Festival

The Overlook Film Festival is not a festival with a competition (or at least they have not listed the winners on their website yet) but a number of high-profile horror projects were in attendance this year including Abigail opening later this month, Cuckoo, and I Saw The TV Glow. This year also had a number of restorations and anniversary screenings including a 3D edition of Creature From The Black Lagoon from 1954, 2014's Occulus starring Karen Gillan, the Italian film The Beyond from 1981, 1974's Phantom of the Paradise, and Hands of Orlac from 1924 with a live orchestral score.

Sunday marked the end of both the Phoenix Film Festival in Phoenix, Arizona and the Cleveland International Film Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.

This Week At The Box Office

1. Civil War: $25.7 Million
2. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire: $15.4 Million
3. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: $5.8 Million
4. Kung Fu Panda 4: $5.5 Million
5. Dune: Part Two: $4.3 Million

Probably the biggest surprise this week is that Monkey Man has fallen all the way out of the top 5 after its opening weekend. Also of note, Cabrini which was boasted by Angel Studios to still be performing strongly, has fallen completely off the list after posting $280,000 last week and totaling $18 Million (almost 19, let's be fair) on a $50 Million budget.

Coming To Theaters This Week

Sony's 2002 film Spider-Man returns to theaters as part of a multi-week quest to offset some of their losses from earlier this year and impending losses from the SUMC movies coming down the line.

Guy Ritchie's new historical action film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare for Lionsgate hits theaters. Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Eiza Gonzalez, Henry Golding, and Cary Elwes star in this film about the first modern black ops mission during World War II to destabilize military positions in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The directing team from the last two Scream movies and Ready or Not reunite with Melissa Barrera in a horror film about a group of criminals who abduct a 12 year old girl who, it turns out, is actually a vampire. Abigail opens nationwide on Friday.

Coming To Physical Media This Week

The only major home media release this week is the final season of Amazon's Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan which arrives on DVD and 4K Blu-Ray.

The Studios At CinemaCon

The best way to handle this is to rank the output of the various studios against each other based on how exciting what they showed off was.

7. Sony

Sony didn't even show up this year, which is weird considering they have a number of major releases coming out this year between Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Venom: The Last Dance, Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Garfield Movie, The Karate Kid, and Kraven The Hunter. This tells me they have a distinct lack of confidence in this slate and bringing any or all of these movies to this event could have potentially done more harm than good. Coming off a nearly full year delay for Kraven The Hunter this is potentially calamitous for their long term Spider-Man-adjacent plans. That said, considering how light their 2025 slate is right now (just Paddington in Peru with the potential for Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse) this could position them for a major showing in 2025's event.

6. Angel Studios

Angel Studios had the worst showing of any studio that actually showed up, and the fact that they even had a presentation is absolutely ridiculous. The only reason they showed up is because Sound of Freedom ended up just short of $300 Million at the box office, which is wild considering the fact that the majority of that money came from their weird "pay it forward" campaign to get people to buy tickets even if they don't go to see a movie. Clearly the only reason they held this thing was to announce David for November 2025, check out our full piece about that here.

5. Warner Brothers

Warner Brothers did not do a ton to move the needle considering most of what they talked about were known entities. The trailer for Joker: Folie a Deux was released publicly the same day as their presentation, the trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been publicly available for weeks now, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is only a few weeks out from release. They did announce that Super/Man, the documentary about Christopher Reeve would be coming to theaters later this year after being acquired at Sundance earlier this year. That said, they did recommit themselves to Bong Joon-Ho's next film Mickey 17 which has been delayed until January 31st, 2025 which, considering the state of Warner Brothers' tax write-offs is great news.

4. Lionsgate

Lionsgate had an interesting medley of films to show off including their upcoming Michael Jackson biopic Michael and John Wick Presents: Ballerina, both slated for 2025 release. Of note for John Wick Presents: Ballerina, the film is set between the third and fourth John Wick movies and will feature the return of key characters from across the John Wick franchise. It was also announced that Stahelski would be returning to add some major action set pieces to the film. They also showcased footage from The Crow and Borderlands, both of which are slated for release later this year. It is clear that Lionsgate wants to make franchises happen, yet they have yet to announce any more Hunger Games films despite the success of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes last November.

3. Universal

Universal held a screening of The Fall Guy, which was well-received (though last year The Flash was a major hit at the event so take that with a grain of salt) and also announced a sequel to last year's Five Nights at Freddy's coming to theaters next year. They showcased this summer's Despicable Me 4 and Twisters, both of which should do solid numbers for the studio. One of my more anticipated films, Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man was showcased as well which shows it will be similar to The Invisible Man in its attempts to modernize the iconic horror film. Dreamworks' major release this year The Wild Robot was also shown off which is anticipated to be one of the best animated films this year. Wicked could be a potential pitfall for the studio though, considering the recent history of theatrical misses in the musical genre but Universal did reassure exhibitors that they intend to have a massive marketing campaign for the film ahead of its full release.

2. Paramount

Paramount only takes second place because a lot of their announcements were for things coming way down the line, not imminently so it is unclear if these things will come to pass at all. They announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, Scary Movie, a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover film, a new Star Trek origin movie, a remake of The Running Man from Edgar Wright, a remake of The Naked Gun starring Liam Neeson, a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and an Avatar: The Last Airbender movie set after the events of the original series with the original characters from the iconic show. That said, Transformers One does sound like an interesting origin story for Optimus Prime and Megatron. The footage from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 also sounds like it will be as fun as the previous films with a possible begrudging partnership between Eggman and Sonic as they have to take down Shadow. They also showcased footage from Gladiator II from Ridley Scott which has the potential to be a major Oscar contender this year.

1. Disney

Disney won because they understood the assignment the best of any of the studios in attendance. They have had no major releases so far in 2024 and their last two 2023 (Wish and The Marvels) releases bombed hard at the box office. They showed off Deadpool and Wolverine coming out this year, Captain America: Brave New World coming next February, Thunderbolts* coming next May, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes coming in a few weeks, Inside Out 2 coming out in a few months, and Mufasa: The Lion King coming this December, Moana 2 coming in November, and this August's Alien: Romulus. That said, Disney did have kind of the inverse problem Paramount did because there is still some uncertainty around their slate. I maintain there is a non-zero chance that Blade gets delayed again into 2026 and The Fantastic Four moves to the November slot. The lack of footage from Avatar 3 is also an interesting choice considering that Avatar: The Way of Water is currently the #3 highest grossing movie of all time so showing that there is another one on the way would have been great to reassure exhibitors. There is also a major lack of certainty in 2026 and beyond for Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm though this could be something they wait to address until D23.

Cannes Unveils Its Official Selections

This year marks the 77th annual Cannes International Film Festival which is one of the big festivals that helps guide award season in the winter. Of note, the following high-profile films are going to be exhibited at Cannes this year.

• The Apprentice: Directed by Ali Abbasi. This film chronicles the ascent of Donald Trump under the mentorship of Roy Cohn.
• Megalopolis: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This is a massive sci-fi epic about a major city that is destroyed by an accident and the warring factions within that want to rebuild it.
• The Shrouds: Directed by David Cronenberg. This film follows a grieving man who develops a device that allows him to communicate with the dead.
• Kinds of Kindness: Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. This anthology was shot during the post production of Poor Things and tells three stories that seemingly connect with each other (based on the use of the word triptych in the synopsis).
• Oh Canada: Directed by Paul Schrader. This film follows a Canadian-American writer on the brink of death who previously fled to Canada to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War.
• Parthenope: Directed by Paolo Sorrentino. According to the director this film is about a woman named Parthenope who is not a siren or a myth like her namesake. Sorrentino previously directed The Hand of God which was nominate for Best International Feature in 2022.
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: Directed by George Miller. This is the Furiosa prequel movie that's been gestating for almost a decade since Mad Max: Fury Road.
• Rumours: Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson. This is a comedy about world leaders at the G7 who get lost in the woods.
• Horizon: An American Saga: Directed by Kevin Costner. This is Costner's big budget western movie that is slated to be released in two parts by Warner Brothers this summer.