CinemaCon 2024

[Marcel Birgelen]

Annoyingly, I wasn't able to make it to any of the demonstrations of Harkness's laser speckle-busting "Hugo" screen surface, though one person I spoke with who did was very impressed.

Speckle only really has been an issue with early 3P projectors and silver screens. What does this Hugo screen bring to the table? Does it sustain a polarized 3D image without speckle and without shaking the entire thing?

[Marco Giustini]

My experience on the field and at home with home cinema projectors (which nowadays can go up to 20/30k:1 real contrast ratio (on/off)) is also the same as Steve's. The biggest subjective improvement is up to, say, 8000:1, then if you watch something which is 20000:1 is not so much better and it really depends on the ability of achieving real darkness in the room.

One thing to also consider is the ANSI contrast - or the intra-frame one. You can have 100.000:1 ON/OFF contrast ratio but if your ANSI is very low (and it usually is anyways) then your perceived contrast will decrease a lot. That's why a proper cinema must be black etc.

Another aspect to consider is our eyes: the HDR standard goes up to 10.000 nits but our eyes have irises! If you blast whatever brightness you can from a display, your eyes will adapt and restrict the subjective perceived contrast, or am I completely mistaken? I find HDR is sometimes like bad 3D: a darker scene with small highlights pushed to very high brightness will look amazing. But if they push everything to 1000 nits (I'm considering HDR on TVs), then it just blinds you.

Steve, are the projectors Dolby are offering for PLF the same used in their cinemas or a different type with maybe lower performance?

[Mike Blakesley]

I completely forgot about the Harkness screen thing. We were shopping for some new chairs for our balcony (found 'em) and between that and looking at new candy and concession ideas, we ran out of time. I did see the Barco "HDR" demonstration, very very good. Beyond that, not being in the market for anything booth-related, we didn't get to the tech floor much.

The candy/seating/lighting floors were good, but it's amazing how much the candy folks have cut back on the free samples. You'd get a little cup with five M&Ms in it. This sucks because we like to bring new stuff home and let our employees sample it, or tell us what's "cool." But, I know some idiots in the past would grab handfulls of the stuff and sell it in their concessions, so you can't blame the distributors.

Moviewise, the convention was a good one, I thought. Disney's upcoming slate, in particular, looks strong, but there's a lot of good stuff coming from all the studios. As always, the trailer presentations were mind-numbing -- too fast, too loud, too intense to get anything out of them. I would love to grab every trailer producer by the neck and scream "STOP with the boom and bash soundtracks!" (You would have to scream, as I'm sure their hearing is completely shot.) There were less "extended sneak peeks" than usual this year, except from Disney, who came with 76 minutes of footage.

I thought I heard Walt Disney turning over in his grave during their presentation, which featured a sizable volley of "F-bombs" not only from the Fox footage, but from the stage as well. The director of the new Lion King movie said it was "fucking great." Language aside, the Ryan Reynolds talkfest that was the Deadpool/Wolverine clip was the highlight. It was fucking hilarious. Mufasa: The Lion King looks good, as does Inside Out 2, which we saw the first 35 minutes of, and Mulan 2. 10 minutes or so of the Planet of the Apes film were very good, better than expected. They did not even mention the already-controversial Snow White remake, even though they mentioned many other titles farther down the road than that one.

There were too many horror titles, although the new trailer for A Quiet Place #3 from Paramount packed a good punch. It was the only one of the horror trailers that stood out as being somewhat original. The rest were all from the same old tired horror formula. There was lots and lots of "big, epic, action, you-gotta-see-it-on-the-biggest-screen-possible" stuff. However, due the the rapid-fire slam-bang of it all, I literally have almost no memory of 90% of the trailers we saw.

Along with the reduction of free candy, there was also a reduction of star power this year. There were celebs, but the voltage of them was definitely lower than previous years. The biggest star was probably Dwayne Johnson, who clearly loves coming to CinemaCon. Kevin Costner was there to promote his two-film epic Western, "Horizon," which he announced is actually going to be four films. He got a standing ovation upon his entrance and seemed genuinely moved by it. Lupita Nyong'o, Halle Berry,. Amy Poehler, Geena Davis, Chris Hemsworth, Henry Cavill and Dennis Quaid were all there. Beyond them, there were a lot of B-listers and up-and-comers. And lots of producers and directors and studio suits.

There was a nice speech from one of the award winning exhibitors, who gave some "as long as I've got the mic" advice to the studios: Cut it out with the long minimum playtimes. "If you have a hit, we'll hold it!" he said. A couple of days later I heard from our booker that Universal is going with a 3-week minimum on all their summer titles this year. If the other studios follow suit, which is likely, our summer this year will suck just like last year's did, when we had to miss 4 of the biggest titles due to insane minimums. Hey studios, we're trying to MAKE YOU MORE MONEY, why don't you let us fucking do it? Thanks to streaming (or the notion that "it's coming out on video in a couple weeks"), the product's value goes in the dumper after the second weekend, so why do we have to go 3 weeks on these things? I sure wish whatever "suits" from the studios who make the decisions on these things would show up at one of these conventions and take questions from the crowd. I'm not even sure who these people are.

I thought the food was terrible, as it is every year at every convention, but that's just me -- I'm a picky eater, and going by the heaps of stuff on people's plates, not everyone felt like I did. The studio-themed outdoor party ran out of the best looking foods of the week ("tomahawk steak") within a half-hour of opening the gate. The desserts were too rich, as always. Why do they take chocolate cake, cover it with chocolate frosting, and then put chocolate sprinkles and chocolate syrup on top of it? Why don't they just go with a simple white cake with one layer of chocolate frosting on it? Because they couldn't charge $15 a plate for something like that, that's why.

We didn't go to all of the seminars because the subject matter didn't apply to us on some of them, which is understandable. We also skipped two of the evening parties this year (Omnia was cool the first time, but they need to move it somewhere else... a night club is no place to eat a meal, for one thing...and they don't give us the full light show, so what's the point of being in there?). The final night bash is cool to look at, but impossible to carry on a conversation in, and we had a 5:30AM flight to catch anyway.

Overall it was fun and of course we want to go next year.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I sure wish whatever "suits" from the studios who make the decisions on these things would show up at one of these conventions and take questions from the crowd. I'm not even sure who these people are.

Having had the distinct "pleasure" of trying to negotiate with said suits in the past, I can tell you that it's hard to win from their single-minded narcissistic ego. They live and breathe by the famous Mc. Hammer adage, only they actually mean it...

The desserts were too rich, as always. Why do they take chocolate cake, cover it with chocolate frosting, and then put chocolate sprinkles and chocolate syrup on top of it? Why don't they just go with a simple white cake with one layer of chocolate frosting on it? Because they couldn't charge $15 a plate for something like that, that's why.

It's Vegas, they could charge that for a stale slice of cheese pizza with a dry face. Whenever in Vegas, I mostly try to avoid convention food or food on the strip... I used to like to go to that taco place on the strip though, but last time I went it was crazy busy, so I guess that was that.

[Geoff Jones]

That's really sad about the minimum playtimes.

There was a nice speech from one of the award winning exhibitors

What is an "award winning exhibitor" and where can I find one? Seriously, who has that designation? I would like like to visit one next time I'm travelling.

[Mike Blakesley]

Here's an interview with him. He seems like a very smart guy who runs a good operation. It's a family business.

https://www.boxofficepro.com/cinemac...assic-cinemas/

[Marcel Birgelen]

There is this German proverb that says that you should let a horse do the thinking, as they have bigger heads. Still, I've been thinking...

I think, the only way to get the studios to do something about their idiotic minimums is not to try to convince any of the suits that run the place, as they'll get their money anyway. But I think a workable way would be by telling the investors that back those studios how much potential revenue they're flushing down the drain...

[Steve Guttag]

I missed Harkness' screen demo, regrettably. As for the NEC projectors, including the 603...it's just pathetic 1600:1 contrast ratio. Really? That is pretty bad and shouldn't be "DCI Compliant." If that is the show a commercial theatre is putting on, it should really close as it makes the entire industry look bad (in my opinion, of course). The only way to combat that low contrast is to put in a high gain screen...which increases problems.

Both Christie and Barco have their lower cost 2K LP projectors too...but their contrast ratios are not so bad. Would it really kill NEC to get their contrast ratios up to 2000:1 on the lower-end machines?

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've seen HeyLED on the floorpan. They specialize in cheaper DCI LED screens. Anybody got an impression regarding their solutions? They seem to be offering 2K screens for smaller rooms, to me that feels a bit backwards. If I go LED screen, I do want to go 4K...

[Geoff Jones]

Having had the distinct "pleasure" of trying to negotiate with said suits in the past, I can tell you that it's hard to win from their single-minded narcissistic ego

I wonder if it would be best for the studios to own the large chains. Let them live and die by the quality of their programming. Now that the Paramount Decree has been overturned, that's a possibility, right?

They would (theoretically) have a vested interest in presentation quality. They would be hard pressed to do worse than the big chains are currently doing.

There's even a tiny chance they would discover that there's a lot of money to be made by providing a fantastic moviegoing experience.

Ideally, there would still be a place for indies and small chains in that world...

[Mike Blakesley]

Having had the distinct "pleasure" of trying to negotiate with said suits in the past, I can tell you that it's hard to win from their single-minded narcissistic ego.

Actual transcripts of conversations I've had with our booker after just about every CinemaCon:

Me: I'm really excited about Movie A, will we be playing that on the break?
Him: They're probably not going to take any single screens on the break.

or:

Me: I was thinking we could play Movie 1 right into Movie 2, they're two weeks apart, that should work, right?
Him: No, Movie 1 is only taking three weeks, so you can't play Movie 2 on the break if you play Movie 1.
Me: Well, we could play Movie 2 right after the third week of Movie 1 though, right?
Him: No, they probably won't have any availability for at least four weeks.
Me: Could we play Movie 2 for one week in the fourth week?
Him: They're probably still going to want two weeks at that point.
Me: So I guess we're not going to play Movie 2 at all.
Him: Probably not, unless you skip Movie 1 on the break.
Me: If we do that, when could we get Movie 1?
Him: Probably after about five weeks, but then you'd have to skip Movie 3, and besides, Movie 1 will have been on home video for a week by then anyway.

This is the only business there is where we want to buy the product, but the people selling it won't let us buy it, FOR NO GOOD REASON.

[James Wyrembelski]

Mike, it's like we're all living the exact same life. I've had these conversations verbatim with my booker every monday for years. Where's that crying emoji??

[Dennis Benjamin]

which we saw the first 35 minutes of, and Mulan 2.

I was there and don't remember this. Additionally "Mulan 2" was a direct to video release in 2008.

[Leo Enticknap]

I wonder if it would be best for the studios to own the large chains. Let them live and die by the quality of their programming. Now that the Paramount Decree has been overturned, that's a possibility, right?

The problem with that is exactly the one for which the Paramount Decree offered a solution in the first place: that it would squeeze independent producers out of all but a handful of college campus theaters, 501(c)(3) arthouses, and independent theaters outside the major metros. One thing I noticed is that the emerging competitors to the Hollywood behemoths (e.g. Angel and Epoch) were making their presence felt at Cinemacon this year, and furthermore with an impressive slate. If they had no chance of getting anything into the big chains, that would be a major headwind for them.

[Jill Mobley]

Oh, my! Thank you for sharing this, Mike. I thought I was the only one that had these conversations. I assumed it was because (in addition to being a small peanut of a theater) I do not use a booker.
I, too, was excited by several films I saw at CinemaCon. I have learned to be realistic about what I can get and when I can get it.

Actual transcripts of conversations I've had with our booker after just about every CinemaCon:

Me: I'm really excited about Movie A, will we be playing that on the break?
Him: They're probably not going to take any single screens on the break.

or:

Me: I was thinking we could play Movie 1 right into Movie 2, they're two weeks apart, that should work, right?
Him: No, Movie 1 is only taking three weeks, so you can't play Movie 2 on the break if you play Movie 1.
Me: Well, we could play Movie 2 right after the third week of Movie 1 though, right?
Him: No, they probably won't have any availability for at least four weeks.
Me: Could we play Movie 2 for one week in the fourth week?
Him: They're probably still going to want two weeks at that point.
Me: So I guess we're not going to play Movie 2 at all.
Him: Probably not, unless you skip Movie 1 on the break.
Me: If we do that, when could we get Movie 1?
Him: Probably after about five weeks, but then you'd have to skip Movie 3, and besides, Movie 1 will have been on home video for a week by then anyway.

This is the only business there is where we want to buy the product, but the people selling it won't let us buy it, FOR NO GOOD REASON.