Where I Answer the Question, 'Are You Not Entertained?'
Closing thoughts on CinemaCon, Universal, Disney, Paramount and Lionsgate
From 40,000 feet, it looked like just any old CinemaCon, just the nation’s theater owners getting together in a giant concert arena to be saluted by the world’s biggest stars, flown in from locations around the globe to pay tribute to the wonders of exhibition. At this high perch, it might as well be 2015 and we’re all just rolling in the endless cash gushers of various universes. Giant ballrooms filled with vendors here to peddle their new chairs or laser-projection systems or deep fried chicken-and-cheese hot honey hot dogs (the high point of my Con).
Up close, however, the cracks are everywhere. The aftershocks of the four or five disastrously wrong turns are playing out, and the decades of complacency bred some habits that don’t go easily. As one who has watched my own industry — journalism — essentially die (just 95 percent of it or so), much is terrifyingly familiar. Throughout the week, reminders of the great wall of denial that presage an industry-sucking doom loop were visible if you cared to look.
If Mistakes Were Made, a swath of them are being corrected. The studios haven’t turned into Harmony Korine Plus yet, but whether by choice or not, they are moving to slightly more original projects. (David Greenbaum and Disney swooping in to acquire the Springsteen making of Nebraska movie that had been presumed headed to A24 is a good example.) Yes, there was no shortage of reboots, sequels and board-game IP on the table at CinemaCon, but compared to last year’s bonanza of Chapter 14s in two parts, it’s at least a half-step in the right direction.
More than a step actually. Talking to executives, they are looking for original projects that can work at studio scale . . . which is like Hollywood relearning how to control a lost limb. But they’re trying. Today I’ll write about what I saw and thought about the final presentations from Universal, Paramount and Lionsgate; and my impressions of Disney.