Celebrating its one hundredth yr, Warner Bros. unveiled a packed lineup of recent big-screen movies at CinemaCon on Tuesday, from a live-action Barbie comedy to Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg’s remake of The Shade Purple. The historic Hollywood studio additionally used its presentation on the annual Las Vegas gathering to tease a ‘10-year plan’ to relaunch its DC superhero movies, which embrace beloved characters corresponding to Batman and Superman.
David Zaslav, who spearheaded final yr’s company merger of Warner and Discovery, took to the stage personally to courtroom an viewers predominantly made up of theatre house owners. “We do not wish to do direct-to-streaming motion pictures,” stated Zaslav, whose predecessor was slammed for releasing Warner movies immediately onto its streaming platform HBO Max — not too long ago rebranded as Max. “We’re in no rush to convey the flicks to Max.”
Throughout a two-and-a-half-hour presentation, Zaslav and fellow Warner bosses introduced out A-list stars together with Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya. Robbie and Gosling co-star in Barbie, out July 21, which finds the ever-present blonde doll residing in a dreamlike, pink-hued world, earlier than at some point beginning to query her too-perfect actuality and travelling to real-life Los Angeles.
“Everybody is aware of Barbie, and she or he’s by no means been on the large display screen earlier than,” stated director Greta Gerwig, who drew inspiration from The Wizard of Oz in addition to disco music tradition. “They made life-size Barbie homes… the whole lot was extraordinary.”
Gosling stated making the movie was ‘like a fever dream,’ explaining: “I used to be residing my life, after which at some point I used to be bleaching my hair, shaving my legs and sporting bespoke neon outfits and rollerblading down Venice Seaside.”
Oprah Winfrey took to the stage to introduce her and Steven Spielberg’s new model of The Shade Purple, out Christmas Day. The film is predicated on the Broadway musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel about Black girls enduring trauma, sexual abuse, and racism within the rural Deep South within the early twentieth century.
“The rationale why it is not your mama’s Shade Purple — however your mama’s gonna actually prefer it — is as a result of the musical issue is so dynamic, and the magical realism is so perfected right here,” stated Winfrey. Winfrey starred within the earlier 1985 movie, incomes an Oscar nomination for greatest supporting actress, and is a producer on the brand new model.
Chalamet launched footage from two new movies wherein he stars. He seems in Wonka, set for December launch, as a younger, idealistic model of Roald Dahl’s well-known chocolatier, whose efforts to launch a magical sweet empire are blocked by a sinister ‘chocolate cartel.’ Chalamet described the ‘weird’ means of capturing the origin story — which concerned “plenty of swimming in swimming pools of precise chocolate.”
He additionally returns for Dune: Half Two, the second and closing a part of Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel, which is due out in November. Austin Butler, Léa Seydoux, Christopher Walken, and Florence Pugh be part of the forged for a sequel that Villeneuve described as an ‘action-packed epic warfare film.’
Ten-year plan
The presentation was rounded off with Warner’s DC Universe of superhero movies. The DC motion pictures, although well-liked, have in current occasions suffered from varied manufacturing points and casting U-turns, and been largely overshadowed by the rival, record-grossing Marvel movies. James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Peter Safran (Aquaman) had been not too long ago introduced in as new heads of the division.
This yr, the studio will launch The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Misplaced Kingdom. Although these movies had been made below Warner’s earlier regime, Gunn stated they may ‘lead completely into the DCU slate that we have now developing beginning in 2024.’
Superman: Legacy, directed by Gunn, is already scheduled for July 2025. Safran stated the longer term DC motion pictures can be “huge, interconnected and full of promise and risk,” and promised he and Gunn are ‘cracking into’ the universe’s ‘first chapter.’
Zaslav, a self-professed ‘lover of DC,’ advised the viewers that Warner has a brand new ‘10-year plan’ for the titles.
CinemaCon, which runs till Thursday at Caesars Palace, gives Hollywood studios an opportunity to showcase their upcoming movies to film theatre bosses — whereas wheeling out the business’s greatest stars to whip up pleasure.
