Studio brass wowed theater owners this week with Maverick: Top Gun, Avatar: The Way of Water and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse among other tentpoles.
But they were also clear at the just-wrapped CinemaCon that a reviving box office requires a wide breadth of content.“If we narrow what we bring to theaters, our audience will get smaller,” said Jim Orr, head of domestic theatrical distribution for Universal Pictures. “We need an industry that creates and impacts culture every single weekend [with] personal stories, original ideas,” he said — a sentiment that echoed across the four-day confab in Las Vegas.Universal, short on superheroes, got plenty of traction with Jurassic World Dominion, Minions: The Rise of Gru and Halloween Ends and films like She Said and Nope.
Its specialty distributor, Focus Features, promised to win back elusive older demos with Downton Abbey: A New Era, and showcased a slate including Mrs.
Harris Goes to Paris, Armageddon Time and Tar. Focus distribution chief Lisa Bunnell committed to 15 films a year and continuing “to champion first-time filmmakers with unique voices that need to be heard” — a critical role Focus and specialty/arthouse distributors play in the wider ecosystem.Neon distribution head Elissa Federoff unveiled the David Bowie doc spectacular Moonage Daydream, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future and the documentary Fire of Love. “We are an ecosystem that survives on the success of our peers,” Federoff said.Are arthouse and specialty demos broadly ready to resume moviegoing?
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