CinemaCon Confidential: The Good, The Bad & The Buttons
My week in Las Vegas, and the last word on ‘pin-gate’
It all began with some buttons.
But my time as a CinemaCon headline was not the whole story of the week in Las Vegas. (For the curious, my final word on that imbroglio is ahead.)
However, there is something eerie about CinemaCon — like a real-life version of The Truman Show where journalists, exhibitors and executives dutifully repeat the same conversations every single year.
This year marked my 10th trip to Vegas for the annual event, a place where space and time collapse, and you can take 13,000 steps without ever leaving Caesars Palace or seeing the sky.
I was at a reception at a very lovely restaurant in the casino, and realized — I have been in this room over and over in the past 10 years, standing in the same spot, talking to the exact same people, about the same subjects…
You don’t need drugs to feel like you’re standing in the middle of a kaleidoscope during CinemaCon — a week here for a decade can produce a similar effect.
Fortunately, that’s probably appropriate for the state of the film world these days, which is somewhere between on its deathbed or roaring back stronger and better — depending on what time of day you ask and where you sit.
Coming out of my time tunnel, coherent, unified field theories can be hard, so allow me to present, in random order, some of the thoughts and impressions I took away from my journey to CinemaCon 2026. Starting first, with those buttons…
Buttongate
