Disney screened footage from its two Cannes out of competition selections at CinemaCon on Wednesday, showing 20 minutes of Pixar’s Elemental in 3D and an extended chase sequence from Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny.
In an otherwise brisk session, head of Disney theatrical distribution Tony Chambers brought on Melissa McCarthy in the session’s sole on-stage appearance to talk up her role as Ursula in Rob Marshall’s reimagining of The Little Mermaid (May 26), and announced that Chris Pine has joined the voice cast as King Magnifico in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ original musical adventure Wish, which will open on November 22.
Chambers teed up the new trailer from Searchlight Pictures’ underdog story Next Goal Wins from Taika Waititi, which opens on November 17 and went down very well. Michael Fassbender stars as a washed-up football coach in the true story tasked with reviving the hapless American Samoa team after a 31-0 thrashing by Australia.
Next Goal Wins is an example of the lower-budget film exhibitors want to programme to bring back audiences in search of non-tenpole entertainment. Searchlight’s 2023 slate includes what could well be another crowd-pleaser, the Sundance pick-up Theater Camp, which opens on July 14.
New Regency’s sci-fi thriller The Creator from Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla), formerly True Love, has moved up to a September 29 slot from October 6. John David Washington and Gemma Chan star in the timely story of humans battling A.I. Chambers showed a sneak peak which went down well with exhibitors in The Colloseum in Caesar’s Palace.
Cannes closing night film Elemental elicited a rousing response from exhibitors in The Colosseum in Caesar’s Palace and will be an important test case for Disney, which needs to reclaim box office success and prestige for its Pixar releases at a time when Universal/Illumination titles like The Super Mario Bros. Movie – now on more than $900m and cruising towards the $bn mark – and 2022 hit Minions: The Rise Of Gru have stolen the headlines.
Under the previous Bob Chapek regime Soul, Luca and Turning Red all went straight to Disney+ during the pandemic, while last year’s Toy Story spin-off Lightyear became the first Pixar title since Onward in 2020 to debut exclusively in cinemas. It earned a relatively paltry $226m worldwide and went to the platform less than two months later.
Under current CEO bob Iger Disney is implementing 7,000 job cuts across all divisions as it seeks $5.5bn in cost savings and has begun the second round this week.
Returning to the CinemaCon session, Harrison Ford sent a taped message teeing up a clip from Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny in which Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in a rickshaw chase/evade Mads Mikkelsen through the streets of Tangier. James Mangold’s action adventure opens on June 30.
Other highlights included clips from Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, which opens internationally on May 3 and in North America on May 5. The tentpole from James Gunn (now co-head of Marvel rival DC Studios) is the second film in Marvel Studios’ Phase 5, which started with Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, the recent release which disappointed at the box office on $474.5m worldwide.
The Guardians Of The Galaxy franchise launched in 2014 and has grossed a combined $1.6bn worldwide, with the second instalment earning $863m worldwide in 2017.
Chambers also cued up the previously released first trailer of Marvels (November 10), the sequel to 2019 $1.1bn global hit release Captain Marvel, and showed clips from Kenneth Branagh’s 20th Century Studios whodunnit A Haunting In Venice (September 15) starring Branagh and Michelle Yeoh; and comedy mystery Haunted Mansion (July 28) based on the theme park attraction and starring Rosario Dawson, LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, and Danny DeVito.
The session climaxed with a screening of 20th Century Studios Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman from Rob Savage, which opens on June 2.
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