By Annaliese Pedavoli, NSW Sales Director, Val Morgan Cinema.
As I sat in The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, with 3,000 other people during Universal’s presentation, listening to Christopher Nolan talk about his upcoming film Oppenheimer, it’s hard to explain the magical feeling I felt… but let me try.
CinemaCon is the biggest global meeting of cinema specialists from all over the world, held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Exhibitors, distributors, vendors, suppliers, advertising businesses and technology businesses alike all come together for four days to indulge in our one shared love – the theatrical experience.
Throughout the four days, we heard from the major studios: Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Paramount Pictures, and Lionsgate, who spoke to their upcoming slate of films for 2023 and beyond. Some, like Paramount Pictures, even name-dropped titles releasing in 2025 – like Gladiator – a Ridley Scott adaptation starring Denzel Washington.
While I could speak endlessly to the exclusive content we saw, the global premieres of films we were lucky to see (yes, I have seen The Flash. Yes, I think it’s one of the best DC films to date), and which celebrities I saw in the flesh (26 in total to be exact), there were a few themes that came through with resounding force.
Dr Jeffrey Cole gave a powerful keynote titled “Movie Theatres Aren’t Going Anywhere” which spoke to the fact that the cinema industry won, it beat the disruption and came out the other side proving the strength of the theatrical experience and business model. Just days before The Super Mario Bros. Movie surpassed $1B at the global box office, Dr Cole posed the question “Could there be a $1B movie without a physical cinema?” and the answer is no. Experimentation on streaming with different release windows, releasing straight to streaming or day-and-date release strategies works to get subscribers to platforms but fails to drive the results for distributors that theatrical releases can.
And because of that, every single distributor spoke to the fact that they are wholeheartedly committed to the theatrical experience. There were endless examples of films that were set to release only on streaming platforms – like Smile, Air, Evil Dead Rise, and The Boogeyman, but after testing so well, they were moved to a theatrical release.
So, why is the theatrical release so critically important for the cinema industry? Take Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery for example. Netflix released this film in cinema for one week prior to moving it to their streaming platform and they made $15M in that one week. The aim wasn’t to purely drive revenue; it was to harness the power that a theatrical release delivers.
With the likes of Amazon and Apple committing $1B to theatrical releases, it’s easy to see that more content is only a good thing for our industry.
Distributors are also committed to broadening the scope of content they are creating. We will see a resurgence of comedy films like Strays starring Will Ferrell, Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, No Hard Feelings starring Jennifer Lawrence and the R-rated comedy Joy Ride which is produced by Seth Rogan and stars Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, and Chris Pang.
Underpinning every presentation was culture. And culture is the cornerstone of the cinema industry. It’s hard to argue that fact when the entire stage glowed pink during Warner Bros. presentation and the audiences immediately started whispering about Barbie, before Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling took centre stage.
In my day-to-day world of proving cinema’s place within a screen strategy, explaining why our channel drives the highest levels of attention and that there is more to culture in the Australian media landscape than live sport, it felt absolutely gratifying to sink into a comfortable chair, surrounded by 3,000 people experiencing the same thing as me - hearing about the biggest and best upcoming cultural moments showcasing why there really is nothing like going to the cinema.
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