ELENA Every major studio just stood in a room full of theater owners in Las Vegas and swore allegiance to the cineplex. Sony, Universal, Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros., Amazon — all of them at CinemaCon this week, all of them with some version of the same message: we believe in theaters. Today we dig into what those pledges actually mean and whether this moment is a genuine structural turning point or a very well-coordinated press conference. Also: the slates these studios revealed are telling us something important about what kind of movies get made when the theatrical revival is riding almost entirely on franchise I-P. And Marcus is going to explain why David Ellison's thirty-films-a-year promise is doing a specific job for a specific audience — and it's not entirely about making movies.
MARCUS One thing before we get into it. Netflix wasn't in the room. Every studio made their pledge of allegiance to theatrical. Netflix sent no one. That absence does more editorial work than anything said from that stage this week.
ELENA Let's start with what actually went down. Tom Rothman opened CinemaCon on Monday — Sony always leads — and he walked up there and gave theater owners a public dressing-down. He called it their Olympic moment, his words, and laid out three immediate demands for the health of theatrical: enforce longer windows, cut the pre-show advertising — he literally told them to quote, "get off the ad crack" — and bring ticket prices down. He said, and I'm quoting from The Hollywood Reporter: "Infrequent moviegoers come at the showtime and hate being forced to watch endless commercials, which they don't have to do at home where the movies are free." And on affordability: "Going to the movies must be more affordable again. I know business has been tough. I'm not heckling; I'm rooting for you." A studio chairman telling exhibitors to fix their own house. At their own convention.
MARCUS The sequencing matters to me. Sony opens, Rothman sets the frame — windows, ads, affordability. Then Universal, Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros. all follow and essentially echo him. That's not coincidence. Those executives talked before they got on their planes to Las Vegas.
ELENA The window piece has real teeth, though. Universal moved first — they committed to forty-five-day exclusive theatrical windows back in March, effective immediately, building to seven weekends by twenty twenty-seven. That's already in place. Then Ellison gets on stage Thursday and says, quote: "I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word. Every film will receive a full theatrical release with a minimum forty-five day window starting today. We will go to S-vod in ninety days. You can count on our complete commitment."
MARCUS And the distance between those two things — Universal did it, Paramount promised it — that's exactly the distance I care about. What's the enforcement mechanism? What happens when a title underperforms in week three and Paramount needs the streaming revenue?
ELENA That's the right challenge. Here's the context that changes the calculus, though. Michael O'Leary at Cinema United — that's the exhibitor trade group, formerly NATO — formally opposed the Paramount-WBD merger on stage the same week. He said it will be quote, "harmful to exhibition, consumers and the entire entertainment ecosystem." He's going to regulators, he's lobbying lawmakers. Ellison's forty-five-day commitment is now on the public record in a regulatory environment where exhibitors are actively fighting the merger. Walking it back post-announcement has a real cost.
MARCUS Huh. So the window commitment functions as merger strategy. It's a regulatory liability if he breaks it.
ELENA Exactly. And O'Leary played it right. He took the carrot and kept the stick. Cinema United formally opposes the merger, welcomes the window pledges, and presses for more. He noted the average window for wide releases in twenty twenty-five was still only thirty-seven days. If every wide release had hit forty-five days, the industry average would have been forty-nine. There's still real distance between what gets announced in Las Vegas and what actually happens at the distribution level.
MARCUS That gap has been the story of theatrical for six years. Real progress, real backsliding, constant pressure required to hold the line.
ELENA What's different now is that the pressure has more leverage attached to it. The public commitments are load-bearing in a merger fight. That's a structural change, even if the pledges themselves are imperfect.
MARCUS I'll give it that. The commitment architecture is smarter this time around. Still want to see what happens in month seven when the merger is closed and the quarterly numbers come in. That's the real test.
ELENA Look at the slates collectively. Avengers: Doomsday — Marvel dropped the trailer in that room to a standing ovation. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Top Gun 3. Dune: Part Three. Mortal Kombat 2. Street Fighter. The Devil Wears Prada 2. Scary Movie. Angry Birds 3. The Cat in the Hat. These are the theatrical commitments studios announced this week. Franchise I-P, sequels, reboots, video game adaptations from one end to the other. Studios are betting the theatrical revival on recognition.
MARCUS A franchise bailout dressed up as a theatrical revival. Exhibition needs volume and event films. Studios are delivering volume — it's just all stuff audiences already know. That de-risks the theatrical bet considerably. Whether it amounts to a real revival is a separate question.
RINA I want to push back on that framing, because the counter-evidence was in that same room. Christopher Nolan showed new Odyssey footage — Trojan horse sequence, Charlize Theron as Calypso — and Universal is releasing it as a full theatrical event. That's original-scale filmmaking with an A-list director at full budget. And Michael B. Jordan walked out at the Amazon MGM presentation to debut Thomas Crown Affair footage, with Jon Batiste performing live on stage beforehand. Jordan told Variety last fall: "I didn't want a reboot. I wanted a reimagination. The first two films were about rich white guys stealing for fun. That doesn't land today. Ours is more personal. The stakes are higher. Still got the fashion, romance." These filmmakers are using the theatrical format as a creative argument.
MARCUS Nolan and Jordan are the exceptions. Bankable at a level where original-scale work gets greenlit regardless. What about the tier below? The filmmaker who's made two well-reviewed films, hasn't won four Oscars — what are they getting greenlit to make for theaters right now?
RINA Neon. That's the answer. Elissa Federoff presented their entire CinemaCon slate — every single film was original. She traced the arc from six people at a co-working space in twenty seventeen to a global studio with a quarter billion dollars at the global box office on original films. Boots Riley brought LaKeith Stanfield out for I Love Boosters. That's a working model for original theatrical cinema, and it's on the main CinemaCon stage.
ELENA And here's where I land on this. The theatrical ecosystem needs both. It needs franchise event films to bring casual moviegoers back two or three times a year. And it needs original films that generate cultural conversation, because that's what makes going to the movies feel like a meaningful act. Sinners dominated the conversation this year. Anora ran in theaters for months. The originals are doing cultural work that the sequels can't replicate.
MARCUS Okay. I'll concede that point. The cultural conversation around original films creates a halo that benefits theatrical overall. Someone who hears about Sinners goes to see it, then comes back the next weekend for Avengers. The ecosystem is interdependent. I'll grant that.
RINA And the signal from the filmmakers themselves matters. Nolan chose theatrical. Jordan chose theatrical — he's got Amazon's balance sheet, he had streaming options. The best filmmakers working today are treating theatrical as their creative home base. That's a signal the industry should be amplifying loudly.
MARCUS The economics of original mid-budget theatrical are still brutal, though. Thomas Crown shot in Europe for over a year. For every film that works, there are ten that disappear in week two and end up on streaming a month later. That cycle is hard to build a sustainable pipeline on.
ELENA Which is exactly why the window matters. Give original films time to find their audience. Forty-five days is a floor, and it helps originals more than franchises — because originals need word of mouth to build in a way that a Marvel trailer doesn't.
MARCUS The window argument closes a lot of gaps if it holds. That's the thread. Everything connects back to whether those Las Vegas commitments survive the first quarterly earnings call that pushes the other direction.
MARCUS I want to be direct about what Ellison's CinemaCon presentation actually was. A hundred-and-ten-billion-dollar merger is pending regulatory approval. Cinema United formally opposes it. And Ellison walks into that room with Tom Cruise on the Paramount water tower, James Cameron on stage, Billie Eilish performing, the Duffer Brothers in a legacy video — and opens by looking every exhibitor in the eye and giving his word. That is a charm offensive with a very specific target audience, and the target audience is federal regulators watching what theater owners say.
ELENA It worked on Adam Aron. AMC's chief executive told The Wrap he's a "big believer" in Ellison's promises. The largest exhibitor in the country publicly on board — that's a material data point for anyone reading the regulatory tea leaves.
MARCUS Aron is rational. He needs Paramount and Warner Bros. content in his theaters. He'll take the commitment and play a long game. That's different from believing the merger math works for exhibition. Those are two separate things.
ELENA So walk me through the merger math.
MARCUS You don't spend a hundred and ten billion dollars to keep doing everything two companies were doing separately. The entire logic of the merger is consolidation — eliminate redundancy, reduce overhead, extract synergies. Ellison is promising minimum thirty films a year combined. Warner Bros. was releasing somewhere around eighteen to twenty films theatrically per year on its own. Paramount hit fifteen for twenty twenty-six — up from eight in twenty twenty-five. Thirty combined is a compression of what two studios would do independently. That's the math.
ELENA Huh.
MARCUS O'Leary said it plainly. Concentrating marketplace power in a smaller group of distributors who control windows, scheduling, and screen placement will have, quote, "a real and lasting impact on Main Street and millions of movie fans around the world." That's a market structure argument. Four major studios instead of five means one fewer seat at the negotiating table for exhibitors — and that leverage doesn't rebuild itself once the merger closes.
ELENA Do exhibitors have real leverage right now, or are they applauding because they had no better option?
MARCUS Both are true. They have their maximum leverage before the merger closes. That's why Cinema United is fighting, and that's why Ellison brought every asset he had into that room. The move is to lock in public commitments now, at peak pressure, so those commitments become regulatory liabilities if he breaks them later.
ELENA And O'Leary is doing exactly that. He accepted the window pledges, praised the progress, and still stood on stage two days before Paramount's presentation and publicly opposed the deal. He said: "After six-plus years of theories and experiments devoted to proving that theatrical's days have passed, there is a growing recognition of something we have always known — theatrical exhibition is the foundation upon which the entire entertainment industry rests." That's an exhibitor who spent six years losing the argument and can finally feel the wind shift.
MARCUS The wind shifted because streaming economics stopped working as cleanly as the models said they would. Everyone's looking for a second revenue leg. Theatrical is that leg — studios need it, streamers are grudgingly acknowledging it, and exhibitors are in the middle of a moment where their leverage is real but temporary. The question is whether they extract enough from it before the merger consolidates the other side of the table.
ELENA What this CinemaCon made clear is that theatrical commitment is now a competitive branding position. Studios are competing on who loves theater owners more. Three years ago they were competing on who could get to streaming fastest.
MARCUS And Netflix was somewhere else entirely, doing different math. Not in the room, not making pledges, not competing on that dimension. That's a strategic choice — they'll engage with theatrical when the economics force it. But they're not signing the compact. And everyone in that room knew it.
ELENA Amazon MGM made the strongest theatrical commitment statement of any studio at CinemaCon — remarkable given that a streamer owns them. Ryan Gosling appeared to announce Project Hail Mary crossed five hundred and twenty-five million dollars worldwide. Jon Batiste performed live on stage. The message across every clip and every presenter: we are a theatrical studio, full stop.
MARCUS Amazon made a deliberate identity choice and it's doing real work. They're saying theatrical is how you launch a multiplatform franchise — Project Hail Mary built I-P from scratch in theaters. Thomas Crown is next, then Highlander, then Spaceballs: The New One. That's a coherent slate strategy mixing original reimagination with legacy revival.
ELENA The Thomas Crown positioning is the most interesting piece. Jordan said he wanted a reimagination — Crown recovers artifacts stolen from their rightful creators over centuries. That's an international commercial premise that plays in every major market. Amazon shot it in Europe for over a year with Jon Batiste scoring. This is event theatrical at real scale.
ELENA Neon was on the main CinemaCon stage this week — which is itself the signal. Chief Distribution Officer Elissa Federoff traced the arc from six people in a co-working space in twenty seventeen to a global studio with a quarter billion dollars at the global box office. The entire slate she presented: original films. Every one of them.
MARCUS "The most awarded independent studio of the decade" — that's their self-description and it's defensible. The pitch to theater owners is direct: we are the pipeline for films that win awards and generate cultural conversation. Give us screens. Boots Riley and LaKeith Stanfield out for I Love Boosters — that's a strong room-read.
ELENA Specialty distributors on the CinemaCon main stage fighting for screen allocations alongside the majors — that's a healthier exhibition ecosystem than the one we had three years ago. Neon being there matters for what the next tier of filmmakers can negotiate.
ELENA Paramount dropped the full Street Fighter trailer at CinemaCon — October sixteenth theatrical release, Paramount and Legendary. Andrew Koji as Ryu, Noah Centineo as Ken Masters, Callina Liang as Chun-Li, Jason Momoa as Blanka. Set in nineteen ninety-three. Director Kitao Sakurai is leaning into the friendship-and-betrayal emotional core alongside the tournament spectacle.
MARCUS Video game I-P is the next franchise pipeline, and Street Fighter is the most interesting test case because the brand recognition is genuinely global across every demographic and every market. Mortal Kombat 2 opens in May, Street Fighter in October. If both perform — and there's real reason to think they will — Paramount just established a video game adaptation strategy that competes with superhero franchises for built-in theatrical audience. That matters enormously for their post-merger slate math.
ELENA The tonal read from the trailer: humor, heart, iconic moves, Tupac into the Non-Blondes. That's a swing. If it lands, it builds word of mouth. Kitao Sakurai made the right call leaning into character over pure fan service — that's what sustains a run past opening weekend.
ELENA Universal confirmed the Snoop Dogg biopic at CinemaCon — Jonathan Daviss stars, Craig Brewer directs, production starts this summer. Brewer's Hustle and Flow remains one of the sharpest films ever made about the economics of hip-hop artistry. This has been in development for years and it's finally moving.
MARCUS The bigger story is the infrastructure. This is the first film under Death Row Pictures' overall deal with NBCUniversal — Snoop Dogg is building Death Row as a content production label, and Universal is betting on that brand as a pipeline. Straight Outta Compton proved hip-hop origin stories can generate serious theatrical numbers. Brewer is exactly the right director to make that conversion work again.
ELENA Jonathan Daviss is twenty-five, coming off Outer Banks with a massive streaming audience. The commercial bet is that audience converts to theatrical ticket buyers for a Snoop Dogg origin story. Craig Brewer knows how to make the economics of creative struggle feel real on screen — that's been his signature going back twenty years.
ELENA Warner Bros. announced a live-action Cat in the Hat. Dr. Seuss I-P, the estate selective since its licensing pullback on older adaptations. Getting this license means WB convinced someone there's a genuinely different creative vision — and a commercially viable one — after the two thousand and three Mike Myers version, which remains one of the more spectacular property mismanagements in recent memory.
MARCUS WB needs signature family tentpole I-P that lives outside the Batman and superhero ecosystem. Post-merger, with Paramount bringing its own franchise library into the combined entity, the family film slate needs its own anchor. Dr. Seuss is globally recognized, evergreen, and the live-action format is wide open after twenty-three years. The ceiling on this is genuinely high.
ELENA The floor is also very low. The estate knows what a bad adaptation costs a property — they've been careful since two thousand and three for exactly that reason. WB either makes the case that this resets the Dr. Seuss live-action conversation, or it joins a distinguished list of things that should have stayed on the shelf. Very little middle ground with Seuss.
ELENA Two things to watch coming out of Las Vegas. First: whether the window pledges survive their first real test — the moment a major studio title underperforms in week three and the streaming clock becomes financially compelling. That's when we'll know if the commitments are structural or situational. Second: the Paramount-WBD merger regulatory review is targeting late September. Between now and then, watch how Cinema United positions itself. They have the public promises on record. The question is how aggressively they use them as the regulatory window closes.
MARCUS Every studio in that room this week pledged allegiance to theatrical. Sony called it an Olympic moment. Universal had already walked the walk. Ellison gave his word, on stage, in front of everyone. Disney rolled the Avengers trailer and let Robert Downey Jr. do the talking. And Netflix was somewhere else — not in the room, not making promises, running a different calculation entirely. Next year's CinemaCon will tell us which of those two positions aged better. That's always the question.