CinemaCon is underway in Las Vegas, and in a first for the convention, three independent distributors shared the stage to give their own mini presentations about their theatrical slates for the upcoming year and beyond. CinemaCon invited Angel Studios, Studiocanal, and Sony Pictures Classics to the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace.
In these Daily Dispatches from CinemaCon, we’re sharing the highlights of what we saw, what was announced, what we didn’t, and what was the overall vibe.
The BEST Thing We Saw
“Everybody Wants to F*** Me,” a production from Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap that stars Taron Egerton, is a genre-bending dark comedy thriller set in the world of modern dating. Production recently wrapped and it’s coming to theaters in 2027. We saw a brief teaser of the film, in which Egerton has “mastered the disguise of being the perfect man” and gets a lot of people starring at him, but we soon find out he’s actually being stalked by women like they’re possessed by Aunt Gladys in “Weapons.”
Danny Boyle was also on hand with “Ink,” a true story about the launch of the British tabloid “The Sun” that stars Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch, and Claire Foy. Boyle joked that his announcement of “28 Years Later” was drowned out by the Beatles movie news last year, so he was glad to be back in this afternoon slot. Boyle said about the film that if you want to know how modern media started, look to 1969, and a tense, stylishly shot scene featuring a discussion of the “5 W’s” of journalism.
Angel Studios’ big showcase was “Young Washington,” which is opening Independence Day and is a Revolutionary War film that serves as an origin story for George Washington. The film is directed by Jon Erwin and stars William Franklyn-Miller as the young Washington, as well as Ben Kingsley, Mary-Louise Parker, Andy Serkis, and Kelsey Grammer.
Sony Pictures Classics also got a laugh when it screened the teaser for “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty,” which was a big hit at Sundance and proved to be an uplifting, quirky, and colorful trailer that the distributor intends to be its big holiday release for the year.
The BIG News in the Room
“Paddington 4” is in the works, as well as an animated “Paddington” feature, however no writers or other filmmakers were announced. Studiocanal also announced remakes in development of John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York,” the horror film “The Howling,” and it is in development on new family film takes on beloved book series “Pippi Longstocking” and “Mr. Men.”
“Ice Cream Man” from Eli Roth also got some serious love, which showed a brief teaser of a little girl covered in blood holding an ice cream cone, as did “Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom,” which had a good gag of the sheep hiding in a shower from the monster and we hear the “Psycho” theme as created by one of the sheep flossing his teeth.
“Fonda,” Justine Triet’s follow-up to “Anatomy of a Fall,” will also release in 2027 and is about to start production, Studiocanal announced. The film stars Mia Goth, Allison Janney, Odessa A’Zion, and Andrew Scott.
What We EXPECTED to See but Didn’t
A title for Tom McCarthy’s next movie, though Sony Pictures Classics did give us a brief first look at the film and closed out its presentation with a brief mention of the film that stars Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, Evan Peters, Tatiana Maslany, Amy Ryan, John Turturro, and Jason Clarke. The film is about a conference in Florida set in 1980 about experts who gather to discuss climate change, all based on the book “Losing Earth.”
What We LEARNED
Angel, the faith-adjacent studio, is getting more into genre films, with titles like “Runner” starring Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson, which is an action movie about a man trying to deliver a kidney to a little girl who needs a transplant, only to be faced up against the cartel. That film opens September 11, 2026. There’s also the political, Cold War drama “The Brink of War” starring Jeff Daniels as Ronald Reagan about the Reykjavik Summit with Gorbachev that co-stars Jared Harris, J.K. Simmons, and Hope Davis and that opens August 14, 2026. Angel also announced a remake of a 1947 John Wayne Western, “Angel and the Badman,” which will star Tommy Lee Jones, Zachary Levi, and Neal McDonough and is directed by Julio Quintana. It opens October 2026. There’s also “Drummer Boy,” which is described as a Christmas musical following two brothers on opposite sides of the American Revolutionary War, which opens November 6, 2026.
The studio reminded the CinemaCon crowd that it is among the Top 10 distributors per year at the box office and that the movies do well “not because of who distributed it, but because audiences chose it,” saying that it has 2 million Angel Guild members and has sold 3 million Pay-It-Forward tickets.
Other Bullets
- Angel picked up the previously announced “Hershey,” which is a biopic about the chocolate company that opens Thanksgiving 2026 and stars Finn Wittrock and Alexandra Daddario.
- Melissa Leo will star in the violent, high-stakes, action-thriller “The Mannequin” for director Sean Byrne (“Dangerous Animals”).
- Studiocanal is developing a feature adaptation of Matt Haig’s book “The Midnight Library.”
- James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” will return to theaters this year for its 35th anniversary, with details to come via Studiocanal.
- The first look at Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas” had virtually no dialogue but was as colorful and intoxicating as you would expect.
- Sony Pictures Classics will release David Wain’s “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” on July 10. The studio showed a brief teaser for the Sundance film in which a fortune teller tells Zoey Deutch that “she must have sex with Jon Hamm.”
- SPC will also have re-releases of Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” and a 4K-UHD restoration of Jane Campion’s “The Piano” later this summer.
