Warner Bros hosted a star-studded CinemaCon session on Tuesday in which the studio brought stars and showed footage from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Mickey 17, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Horizon: An American Saga, Joker: Folie a Deux, and Trap, among others.
Michael Keaton, Tim Burton, Robert Pattinson, Bong Joon Ho, Kevin Costner, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, and M Night Shyamalan were among the celebrities who took to The Colosseum stage in Caesars Palace to promote the upcoming slate in the first studio presentation at CinemaCon 2024.
Bong and Pattinson promoted Mickey 17 from Plan B, which Bong described as a “tale of a simple man on a hero’s journey” before showing a first look at the story of an ‘expendable’ employee on an ice world expedition who has died 17 times and tries to stop his clone from replacing him.
Pattinson called the director “my hero” and said playing the role was “a no-brainer”. For his part, the South Korean Oscar-winning director of Parasite said he was drawn to a craziness in the actor’s eyes. Mickey 17 is scheduled to open on January 31, 2025.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice director Tim Burton took to the Las Vegas stage alongside Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, and Justin Theroux. The group did not disappoint.
Keaton told session hosts and Warner Bros Motion Pictures Group co-chairs and co-CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy that he and Burton had toyed with the notion of a sequel for years.
“Finally it got right. The time was right and they got the script,” Keaton said, before breaking into character with a trademark growl. “It’s really fucking good.”
Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder round out the key cast. Burton flies back to London on Wednesday to finish the film, which opens on September 6.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga leads Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth joined George Miller to talk up the May 22 international and May 24 US action adventure, which premieres out of competition in Cannes on May 15. They showed spectacular action footage.
Director and co-writer Todd Phillips introduced the trailer premiere of Joker: Folie a Deux, which opens on October 4 and sees Joaquin Phoenix reprise his Oscar-winning title role alongside Lady Gaga as love interest Harley Quinn.
In a popular move with attendees, Kevin Costner walked on stage to show clips from both instalments of Horizon: An American Saga opening on June 28 and August 16. It was recently announced that part one of the western secured an out of competition slot in Cannes.
Costner started working on the Horizon story in 1988 and said, as previously reported, that two further instalments were on the way. “When I think about the promise of America, there was a promise that if you were tough enough, mean enough, resourceful enough, lucky enough, you could take what you wanted in America,” he said.
“That promise meant we stepped on a whole group of people who had lived here for thousands of years… I don’t pass judgement on that… but it was the promise that if you came West and survived it, you could make a home. To me that’s drama and that’s what this whole thing [filmmaking] is all about.”
Costner told attendees, “I never make a movie thinking it won’t blow up and I hope it blows up for you.” De Luca and Abdy presented him with the 2014 Cinema Icon Award.
Next came M Night Shyamalan to tempt audiences with the trailer for his upcoming horror Trap, which has just moved up one week on the release calendar to August 9. “Bruce Willis is dead,” De Lucas quipped when Abdy referenced the filmmaker’s memorable calling card The Sixth Sense in her introduction to the filmmaker.
Warner Bros is in the Shyamalan family business and brought his daughter Ishana Shyamalan on stage to premiere the second trailer for her feature debut and fantasy horror The Watchers starring stars Dakota Fanning. The New Line film is set in Ireland, where it shot, and opens in the US on June 7.
James Gunn sent a recorded greeting from the Atlanta production of Superman: Legacy (June 11, 2025) and his DC Studios co-head Peter Safran introduced the first theatrical trailer of Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui’s documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Warner Bros. Discovery pounced on the film following its Sundance premiere in a reported $15m deal and will open the film in September.
Another documentary on the Warner Bros slate is The Commandant’s Shadow, in which Hans-Jurgen, the 86-year-old son of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoss, reckons with his family’s horrific past. The story of Rudolph Hoss’s domestic life was turned into the A24 drama and double Oscar winner The Zone Of Interest by Jonathan Glazer. No specific release date was announced although exhibitor websites are showing May 29 bookings through Fathom Events.
The 2024 schedule includes international rights to the action thriller Twisters from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung starring Glen Powell. Universal releases in North America on July 19.
A preview of 2025 highlights featured brief recorded messages: Jack Black from Minecraft in April; Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway from mystery Flowervale Street; Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Bride, her directorial follow-up to The Lost Daughter; the next Final Destination instalment; and Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan for their untitled supernatural thriller.
The studio’s president of international distribution Andrew Cripps and president of domestic distribution Jeff Goldstein introduced the session wearing Beetlejuice outfits. Last year the pair wore pink in honour of Barbie.
The executives rolled out a victory sizzle reel of 2023 hits including the biggest hit in the studio’s history, Barbie, which grossed $1.45bn worldwide. They lauded early 2024 box office successes for Legendary’s Dune: Part Two on $666m, and Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire on $362.9m and counting, as well as the $632m global box office of late 2023 release Wonka.
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