CinemaCon, a conference for movie theater owners and related entities, kicked off in Las Vegas on Monday night with previews of upcoming Paramount movies.
Each day of CinemaCon will find a couple of the studios presenting big looks at their 2016 and 2017 slates to attendees. The studios show off footage of their new movies to give theater owners a sense of what’s coming to their cineplexes over the next year. Hypable is present at CinemaCon this week to cover each of the studio panels.
Paramount hosted the first presentation of CinemaCon 2016 and, unfortunately, set the conference off on the wrong foot. Whereas last year’s Paramount panel featured Tom Cruise appearing in person, showing off how he flew on the outside of a freakin’ airplane for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, this year’s “wow” moments were “wow, this is awkward.”
There were a couple of good segments during the presentation. For example, Tom Cruise appeared via video to show off new footage from his Jack Reacher sequel Never Go Back co-starring Cobie Smulders (in theaters October 21). Cruise billed it as having “real classic movie stuff,” and we have to agree based on the footage we saw, including a scene where Jack spooks a couple of cops in a diner when he correctly predicts a series of events. Prior to showing the Jack Reacher footage, Cruise revealed that the next Mission Impossible will begin filming this fall. He promised that the stunts and sets will live up to last year’s MI hit, Rogue Nation.
The most awkward moment of the night was during the first segment, when Will Arnett and Megan Fox came onstage to promote the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel Out of the Shadows. They did a bit in which they ordered a pizza to the theater and then delivered it to a specific person in the audience. The problem was the guy they needed to deliver the pizza to, after the pizza guy had already walked it through the theater, was sitting in the very back. Cue Megan Fox complaining about walking down onto the floor to deliver the pizza, and a couple of minutes in which pictures were taken and pizza was eaten. The whole thing was just slow, weird, and not funny. And I’m not even getting into the bad banter between these two (though Arnett was able to improvise a bit, which yielded a couple funny moments). This was all to just show an extended version of an Out of the Shadows trailer. Take any awkward awards show banter, times it by 10, and that’s how weird this segment was. It would’ve been better if Paramount gave pizza to everyone.
Vin Diesel also phoned into the presentation via video and offered a hello from the set of XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. He revealed that the teaser trailer will arrive with Star Trek Beyond this summer. After proclaiming to have one of the coolest movie casts ever, he also teased that there will be a few surprise cast members.
In another wishy-washy moment, Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson came in (again, via video) to introduce a first look at their new Baywatch movie. After a fun introduction with supporting co-stars including Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, and Ilfenesh Hadera, a trailer was presented to attendees. Baywatch is undoubtedly going to be R-rated, thanks in part to the two F-words and one P-word I heard during the trailer. As for how the movie looks? The dialogue was a little rough, and the humor childish, but it looked, dare I say, fun and self-aware? Zac and The Rock definitely have great chemistry with one another, which may be the film’s saving grace. It’s coming out next summer and seems like one of those stupid-as-hell movies you go to just because it’s the summertime and Zac Efron’s shirtless and hot in it. The “Baywatch” title is sure to help too.
Elsewhere during their presentation Paramount shared footage from Ben-Hur (starring Jack Huston, seen below), the horror film Rings (including a terrifying sequence on a plane), Florence Foster Jenkins starring Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep (it looked cute!), and a few stills from Fences, an adaptation of the Pulitzer winning play and starring Viola Davis and Denzel Washington.
Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner were also on hand to introduce footage from Story of Your Life, a new science fiction film by Denis Villeneuve. The film was arguably one of the better previews of the night thanks to its interesting premise: Aliens visit the earth and Adams’ character, a linguistics expert, has to try and speak to them to see if they’re good or bad visitors.
Towards the end of the presentation J.J. Abrams was honored with CinemaCon’s Showman of the Year Award. It was one of the better parts of Paramount’s presentation thanks to Simon Pegg, who introduced Abrams and offered quite a few laughs. Weirdly, while Star Trek Beyond was referenced, Paramount shared no footage whatsoever. Instead, Abrams said that the new Star Trek may be “the most thrilling Star Trek yet.” If it’s that good, why not at least show a recent trailer? Hm.
Warner Brothers and Sony will share their previews on Tuesday. Disney and Universal will present on Wednesday.