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CinemaCon 2022 Review
CinemaCon 2022
CinemaCon 2022 Represents An Industry Turning Point, reports J. Sperling Reich
If one is looking for a sign that movie theatres are recovering from the financial
battering suffered during two years of COVID shutdowns, they need look no further than this year’s CinemaCon. The annual gathering of cinema operators and vendors took place in person, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas at the end of April, with attendance creeping back towards pre-pandemic levels.
The positive atmosphere was no doubt aided by several factors, including streaming giant Netflix announcing just a week before the show that they had lost subscribers for the first time in ten
years. Indeed, David Zaslav, the CEO and President of the recently merged Warner Bros. Discovery, told investors during the company’s first quarter earnings call that there was no need “to really collapse the entire motion picture business on streaming.”
This is a complete about-face by the studio that released 18 theatrical titles
day-and-date on their streaming service, HBO Max, just a year before and it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for the National Association of
Theatre Owners (NATO), the trade group that organizes CinemaCon. The news of Zaslav’s comments arrived just moments before the organization’s CEO and President, John Fithian, took to the Coliseum stage at Caesars to deliver his State of the Industry address in which he declared, “I am pleased to announce that the simultaneous release is dead as
a serious business model and piracy is what killed it.”
Fithian was alluding not only to the studios’ recent practice of sending film titles to their own streaming services at the same time as their theatrical
releases, but also acknowledge a reality that Charles Rivkin, the CEO of the Motion Picture Association, had spoken about at length a few minutes earlier. Rivkin outlined in detail many of the initiatives the MPA is undertaking to combat piracy around the world in order to protect the copyright of their members; studios and streamers.
Slates & Stars
Seven distributors made product presentations at this year’s CinemaCon including Lionsgate Films, Neon, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios
and Warner Bros. Pictures. And, unlike last year, they brought along movie stars like Jamie Lee Curtis, Robert De Niro, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Keanu Reeves and Zoe Saldana as well as filmmakers like David
Cronenberg, Baz Luhrmann and multihyphenate Olivia Wilde.
One of the big highlights amid the waterfall of content came during Disney’s presentation, in which 30 minutes of Pixar’s “Lightyear” was shown, as was the trailer for “Avatar: The Way of Water”, which premiered in 3D. Another was the very first public screening of “Top Gun: Maverick” which thrilled CinemaCon attendees.
Meanwhile, the trade show, which is spread throughout different ballrooms on two different floors in Caesars
conference center, was humming with renewed commercial activity. Every concession vendor imaginable was present, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Mars, Hershey, Wrigley and many major suppliers whose companies weren’t allowing corporate travel during last year’s CinemaCon. One could put together a whole meal from samples of hot dogs, chicken fingers, pizza, popcorn, soda, cocktails and candy collected at trade show booths while
reclining in luxury, thanks to the numerous seating companies present.
Manufacturers such as Christie, Cinionic, Dolby, DTS, GDC, Sharp/NEC, QSC and others used the conference to announce new deals and even new
products developed during the pandemic. But a more vexing development affecting all technology providers equally is supply chain issues. Exhibitors from the US, flush with funds from the Shuttered Venue Operator Grants (SVOG), are purchasing equipment - however, delivery of that equipment is severely hampered by a lack of product components.
In fact the only anxiety expressed by attendees at CinemaCon 2022 was over
the reduced number of films being released by major Hollywood studios and whether the industry upswing would continue once SVOG funds run
out later this year. Otherwise, the feeling from CinemaCon attendees of all stripes over whether box office and business
will return to 2019 pre-pandemic levels seems to no longer be a question of if, but when.
