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Universal talked a big game at its CinemaCon presentation on Wednesday afternoon – and specifically about big numbers in terms of releases.

The studio has more than 20 movies scheduled for release this year (yes, even more than production powerhouse Disney), and was ready to sell that idea to the assembled theater owners in the audience.

Pairing on-stage filmmaking talent with workers from the boots-on-the-ground cinema world, Universal kicked things off with Jordan Peele’s anticipated next horror, ‘Nope’.

Taking part in a Q&A with Anthony Fykes, co-owner of Next Act Cinema, the first-Black owned cinema in the Baltimore area, Peele outlined his movie-making policy. “I’m always attracted by my favorite movie I haven’t seen before,” said Peele. “My plan is to bring these new ideas and nightmares to the big screen.”

And about his latest? “This is definitely a ride. I like titles that are into how the audience is feeling and reflect on what they are thinking and feeling in the theater,” Peele told the crowd. “I’m going to personally thrive on the amount of times that we hear ‘Nope’ in the theater.”

Despite comically answering “nope” to the question of whether he’d brought footage, he did unveil a new trailer for the movie – which stars Daniel Kaluuya (from Peele’s ‘Get Out’), Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Barbie Ferreira, Brandon Perea, and Michael Wincott.

Peele did ask that the audience not give away anything about the new teaser (which won’t be shown to regular audiences for a few weeks) but so far the story appears to involve workers at a ranch that caters to Hollywood productions being bothered by threats from the sky. Peele revealed that he’d been using new IMAX techniques to bring to the screen shots that no one has seen before.

Somewhere, you can just hear James Cameron muttering, “challenge: accepted!”

‘Nope’ is scheduled to land in theaters on July 2nd.

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Next up was Jamie Lee Curtis, there to promote ‘Halloween Ends’, and from the sounds of her comments, it’s also the big finale for her performance as victim-turned-badass Laurie Strode.

Yet before all of that, Curtis displayed her trademark sense of humor. “Two people got up?! Okay, whatever, it’s only been 44 f*****g years. I’m fine. I’m secure. Its’ fine. It’s really nice to be here again,” she announced upon arriving on stage (to a huge cheer and warm reaction from the audience).

Curtis went on to describe ‘Halloween Ends’, once again directed by David Gordon Green– as “Laurie Strode’s last stand.” The movie stars Curtis and Andi Matichak as Laurie’s granddaughter, Alysson, with the two working to stop stalking killer Michael Myers for good. It’ll wrap up the trilogy kicked off by Green in 2018’s ‘Halloween’ and continued via last year’s ‘Halloween Kills’.

Curtis visibly welled up as she confessed that, “It’s been the ride of my life to portray Laurie Strode,” adding that she knows now why horror movies matter: “Horror lets us confront what we can’t control.”

‘Halloween Ends’ stalks into theaters on October 14th, just in time for… well, you know the holiday it’s named for.

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The horror vibes continued with techno terror ‘M3GAN,’ which like, the recent ‘Halloween’ movies is a Blumhouse production.

Produced by James Wan and directed by ‘Housebound’s Gerard Johnstone, it stars Allison Williams as Gemma, a brilliant roboticist working at a toy company who creates a lifelike doll. When she gains custody of her orphaned niece, she uses the prototype of the doll with unimaginable consequences.

Williams was on stage to introduce the footage – which, somewhat predictably shows the doll reacting badly when someone in the family starts tries to shut it down when it begins behaving oddly – and admitted that despite starring in the likes of this and ‘Get Out’, “I’m genuinely too scared to watch 99 percent of the films in the genre.”

‘M3GAN’ will find its way into theaters on January 13th next year.

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Baltasar Kormakur’s latest, ‘Beast’, stars Idris Elba, and while it had a more muted presentation – really just a trailer – the footage showed Elba’s Dr. Nate Samuels on an African adventure with his wife and daughters when the situation turns desperate, and they are hunted by a lion. Samuels will have to survive and fight back to save his family.

‘Beast’ will stalk to theaters on August 19th.

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Keeping up with the terror vibe was the first trailer for André Øvredal’s ‘Last Voyage of the Demeter’, which adapts the chapter from Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ entitled ‘Captain’s Log’.

The movie stars David Dastmalchian, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, Corey Hawkins, Javier Botet, Jon Briones and more in the story which follows the merchant ship Demeter on a voyage from Carpathia to London. Strange events befall the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage. Probably because a certain vampire is aboard, and takes a liking to some of his fellow passengers…

‘Last Voyage of the Demeter’ sails in on January 27th next year.

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The terror levels decreased significantly (well, depending on how you view stressful family gatherings) thanks to star and executive producer Jo Koy introducing ‘Easter Sunday’.

Bringing the laughs (and making references to Jamie Lee Curtis’ sweary schtick), Koy explained how he planned his outfit – he was clad in his 18-year-old son’s pants to be fashion forward. “But I don’t have my son’s balls. I have 50-year-old balls.”

He continues by saying that Steven Spielberg first caught his stand-up act, and invited the comedian in to pitch his story, a universal one (he’s at the right studio, then). “We all laugh at the same shit,” Koy explained.

After Koy threw sweatshirts out to the crowd, he cued the trailer, which draws from his own life experiences and shows his chaotic Filipino family around the dinner table. The movie, despite its seemingly seasonal title, will be out on August 5, directed by Jay Chandrasekhar.

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Koy was followed by ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ voice star Steve Carell, there to promote the latest chapter of the ever-expanding ‘Despicable Me’ franchise. He joked around with a cinema owner, who he challenged to mimic Gru and then introduced a clip from the movie, which arrives on July 1st after being pushed back more than once by pandemic concerns.

Animation was also represented by ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’. Introduced by one of the movie’s voice stars, Harvey Guillen (he’s Perro, a new character, who happens to be a chatty chihuahua), the story follows Puss’ (Antonio Banderas) attempts to secure more lives for himself after all his various scrapes. A new trailer was shown for the ‘toon, which debuts on December 21st.

Billy Eichner was on predictably comic form, arriving at CinemaCon for ‘Bros’, the rom com he wrote and stars in alongside Luke Macfarlane.

As is usual for the event, Eichner brought a clip from the movie, which showed Eichner as a podcast host who gets hired by a movie studio to write a gay romantic comedy in a very meta idea. Eichner’s character lays out his mission statement: “I don’t want any Hollywood bullshit, no scenes where two gay guys are about to hook up and all of a sudden the camera conveniently pulls away.”

‘Bros’ breaks new ground by featuring an all-LGBTQ+ cast, which Eichner talked about on stage. “You don’t believe a gay man can play straight but you suspend disbelief for Chewbacca,” he quipped, touting ‘Bros’ as the first gay rom-com ever to come from a major studio, adding he’s “not talking about the new Buzz Lightyear movie.”

Directed by Nicholas Stoller, ‘Bros’ will be out in theaters on September 30.

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Despite a comparative lack of star power on stage, ‘Ticket to Paradise’ boasts plenty of it on screen, with George Clooney and Julia Roberts as a divorced couple that reunites and travels to Bali to stop their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever), from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago by marrying someone she just met. Billie Lourd, Lucas Bravo, Amanda O’Dempsey, Rowan Chapman, Murran Kain and Vanessa Everett round out the cast for that one, which travels to theaters on October 21st.

On a more serious note, that was followed by the first look at ‘She Said’, the drama about the investigative reporters at the New York Times who helped to break the Harvey Weinstein story that kicked off the #MeToo movement.

Stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, who play reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor respectively, were on hand to introduce the film’s trailer, and they talked up the importance of the behind-the-scenes story and Kantor and Twohey’s book on which the film is based.

The trailer showed Twohey and Kantor starting small in trying to peel back the layers on harassment, only to go deeper down the rabbit hole and finding people unwilling to say anything on the record as it turned to accusations about Weinstein.

“The only way these women are going to go on the record,” Kantor says in the trailer, “Is if they all jump together,” Twohey responds.

Maria Schrader directs, with the screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The film opens in theaters from Universal on November 18th.

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Universal’s Focus Features had its own section, to debut looks at several of its movies. They included ‘Downton Abbey: A New Era’, due on May 20th, heartwarming comedy ‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’ (July 15th), and ‘Little Children’ director Todd Field’s first film in 15 years, ‘Tár’, set in the world of classical music, starring Cate Blanchett as a conductor. ‘Tár’ will be in theaters on October 15th.

James Gray’s ‘Armageddon Time’ also received a first look of its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The coming-of-age story about the strength of family and the generational pursuit of the American Dream showcases a cast led by Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway. It has yet to score a general release date.

Following the relatively low-key, prestige Focus offerings, it was back to action chaos for ‘Violent Night’, introduced by star (and ‘Stranger Things’ regular) David Harbour.

‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ director Tommy Wirkola’s latest stars Harbour as a weapon-toting, butt-kicking Santa, who must recuse a household taken hostage by a John Leguizamo’s villain.

Harbour raved about the experience of playing a hammer-swinging Santa who swears up a storm. The tone appeared to be a blend of ‘Die Hard’ and ‘John Wick’ and the movie arrives down theater chimneys on December 2nd.

Ignoring the elephant in the room – as in the sudden directorial vacancy for ‘Fast X’ – Universal chose to close its presentation with other big creatures: the dinosaurs of ‘Jurassic World Dominion’.

Bryce Dallas Howard and Jeff Goldblum were brought on stage to unleash some new footage, which sees the legacy likes of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Goldblum teaming up with Howard and Chris Pratt to find a missing baby raptor.

“We are genuinely very enthused, we are crazed about this movie,” Goldblum told the crowd, revealing that this will be the first movie his kids see in theaters.

And of course, there was room for a little banter after Goldblum mentioned his character Ian Malcolm’s warnings about messing with nature in the original ‘Jurassic Park’. “That wisdom was ignored through subsequent movies,” he pointed out. Said Howard, “What would these moves be if people made the right choices?”

Retorted Goldblum, “You may be on to something. Maybe that’s been the message all this time, that dinosaurs are clever and homo sapiens are ignoramuses, or is it ignorami?”

‘Jurassic World Dominion’ roars into theaters on June 10th.

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