The talk of the week at CinemaCon may have been Sony’s bombshell announcement about its four planned movies about The Beatles. Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn, Barry Keoghan, and Harris Dickinson are your Fab Four. And how these movies will look, the order they’re meant to be watched in, and most notably, Sony’s ambitious plan to release all four films in the same month, opens up a world of questions.
But there was one other thing that raised an eyebrow: the date — April 2028.
The teasing of movies three years down the road was the longest any studio asked exhibitors to wait to get excited for their product (the movies should be worth it), but they were hardly the only studio playing the long game at this year’s CinemaCon. A number of studios’ heavily touted films opening in 2026 or being announced for 2027 while only showing a smattering of content for this summer or this fall.
Sony had films like “28 Years Later,” “Karate Kid: Legends,” “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” and “Caught Stealing” earmarked for this year that all received teases, but it also hyped the next “Spider-Verse” movie now dated for 2027 (after being pushed back from a release as early as 2024), and the fourth live-action “Spider-Man” film, “Brand New Day,” dated for ’26. “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” “Anaconda,” and “Resident Evil” were also highlighted as late ’25, early ’26 and beyond entries.
Lionsgate after a dismal ’24 came back strong with “Ballerina,” “The Long Walk,” “Power Ballad,” “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” and “The Housemaid,” but the highlights (outside of The Weeknd’s surprise performance) were several “John Wick” announcements, the reveal of the new “Hunger Games” logo, Luca Guadagnino’s “American Psycho” remake, and the unfortunate news about its Michael Jackson biopic likely moving into ’26 after being heavily touted at last year’s CinemaCon.
Amazon MGM Studios too leaned into the 14 films it already has lined up for 2026, most notably “Project Hail Mary” with Ryan Gosling and teases for others like the Mahershala Ali action film “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.” They have a pass, though — more on them in a bit.
One source speculated that the look to the future could be by design. With 2025 already on rocky footing, with the box office down roughly 11 percent down from where it was at this point last year, studios need to convey that there’s something positive on the horizon. But theaters need some relief now, and which movies are coming soon wasn’t all that was on exhibitors’ minds.
The 45-Day Window Debate
On Tuesday at CinemaCon, Cinema United CEO Michael O’Leary made the case that studios should commit to a theatrical window with a “baseline” of no shorter than 45 days. Two days later, a real icon in James L. Brooks took the Colosseum stage to agree with him.
The movies to which he believes this matters most aren’t the biggest tentpoles but everything else. O’Leary cited data that of the Top 100 movies each year, the top 20 movies all had an average window exclusive to theaters of 49 days, compared to just 31 days for the bottom 80 films. But while the top 20 movies each year declined 10 percent in box office dollars compared to pre-pandemic levels, the bottom films declined by 32 percent.
“To be fair, there is no single reason that these 80 movies dropped so severely, but shorter windows, and the reality that consumers expect these movies to be in the home within 3-4 weeks, is a major factor,” O’Leary argued. “Longer windows, supported by marketing would reduce the current level of decline, and create more revenue across the industry.”
It was such a big talking point that moderator Matt Belloni in a panel discussion asked Regal Cineworld Group CEO Eduardo Acuna why he doesn’t refuse to play a studio’s films unless they make a 45-day window the standard. Acuna said he agrees with the 45-day window, but he “hopes it doesn’t get there” in terms of drawing a hard line in the sand. “Let’s not jeopardize the long-term health of the industry for a short term gain,” he later added.
As the other panelists Peter Levinsohn of NBCUniversal and Tom Quinn of Neon argued, a movie’s success is not necessarily based on a one size fits all solution. Windows have been fine-tuned over the years such that they can be more aggressive when it comes to making a film, especially mid-size titles, available on transactional PVOD and more conservative with when they make their way to SVOD services such as Disney+, Paramount+, or Peacock. Levinsohn also said he’s not seen the evidence that adding a movie to PVOD significantly impacts its theatrical performance, that it gets a whole new round of digital marketing that helps it theatrically as well, though that’s hard for most exhibitors to believe.
Quinn had a compromise: If the movie were to be held longer, the amount of rental, or how much a share of revenue the theater takes compared to the distributor, could be adjusted. Such bespoke options for each individual film may be key to the long-term health of the industry.
Can Exhibitors Improve the Theatrical Experience?
Part of the reason studios aren’t sold on the windowing question alone is because they want to see more creativity across exhibition. During Sony’s presentation, Tom Rothman wondered why Tuesday is the only night of the week that exhibitors offer discounted tickets? Paramount distribution chief Chris Aronson (before riding off stage on a dirt bike) pitched the ideas of limiting trailers and ads in front of films that grossly delay a movie’s actual start time, making matinee pricing last longer into the day, doing specialty promos like Cinemark’s recent Bring Your Own Popcorn Bucket, better leveraging social media and grassroots marketing, and offering other daily deals.
And Quinn during the panel discussion was also an advocate of changing how theaters do trailers. He said it’s not often enough that his films get meaningful trailer play, but he applauded circuits like Alamo Drafthouse that actually curate their trailers before particular films.
Combine these with the $2.2 billion that theater chains have committed to upgrading their cinemas, which studios are hoping doesn’t go simply to pickleball courts (yes, O’Leary told IndieWire in September 2024 that pickleball courts will be part of the upgrades). Joseph Kosinski on the panel with Acuna, Levinsohn, and Quinn said he misses the days of a THX standard back in the ’90s when theaters were all calibrated to expected technical levels. He said IMAX is the rare brand that ensures its picture and sound is always set properly, but for other PLFs, theaters can’t charge premium prices without offering an actual premium experience.
Can Amazon MGM Be the New Fox?
The real problem as most exhibitors see it is there aren’t enough movies in theaters. At the box office’s peak in 2018 there were roughly 900 films released theatrically, compared to just 600 in 2024. The argument goes that it’s not strictly more quantity that theaters need but more variety, that if all people see at the multiplex are big tentpole superhero films, they won’t show up at all. It’s the case Angel Studios made in its presentation to exhibitors. But while they’ve been an exciting new presence in the box office, even cracking the Top 10 among distributors, many others are looking to Amazon as the saviors.
The feeling around the Colosseum was that since Disney absorbed 20th Century Fox in 2017, there hasn’t been anyone to fill that void. Amazon MGM in its first year at CinemaCon could be the ones to do that. Prime Video head Mike Hopkins during the studio’s late night presentation said it’s committed to have 15 films in theaters by 2027 and already has 14 by 2026. And while everyone at CinemaCon loves gushing over exhibition, Amazon MGM really made sure to drive home the point, with just about every speaker, that it really cares about theaters and not just about driving subscriptions to a service that offers free next-day shipping on toilet paper.
Fittingly, the studio’s slate was a starry, diverse group of titles, including big commercial spectacles like “Project Hail Mary,” more adult dramas like the Colleen Hoover adaptation “Verity” and Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” thrillers like “Crime 101” and “Mercy,” and even leaning heavily on its Orion Pictures portfolio for more underrepresented stories, most notably the Tarantino-esque “Is God Is” with Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown.
