CinemaCon 2026 is officially underway, and we're sitting through alotof corporate presentations to bring you all the biggest movie news from Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
The annual convention held by theater owners' association Cinema United, CinemaCon gives studios the opportunity to show off their forthcoming slate of movie projects in a ballroom full of movie theater operators and cinema executives. The presentations generally consist of execs hyping the theatrical experience and touting the highlights of a studio's most exciting projects for the next calendar year.
Revelations at CinemaCon can come in the form of trailers, extended movie scenes, still images, and concept art from upcoming films. Some of that material is exclusive to the room and is never officially released to the public, though some of it does end up hitting social media to generate buzz.
Monday saw two major presentations grace the Colosseum Theater of Caesar's Palace: an afternoon extravaganza from Angel Studios, Sony Pictures Classics, and StudioCanal; and an evening exhibition from Sony Pictures.
Here's all the major news from CinemaCon 2026, day one.
Angel Studios
The Brink of War
Release date: Aug. 14, 2026
Everyone's favorite right-wing-adjacent distributor, which specializes in faith-based movies and historical dramas, kicked off the CinemaCon 2026 festivities with a robust slate of projects that soundexactlylike something Angel Studios would make. Perhaps the most star-studded of these isThe Brink of War, a historical drama wherein Jeff Daniels' Ronald Reagan and Jared Harris' Mikhail Gorbachev try to work out a nuclear deal at the Reykjavik Summit in 1986.
The studio showed a trailer for this in which President Reagan delivers super epic lines like "We're not trying to win a war. We're trying to end one." We also got a look at J.K. Simmons as Secretary of State George Shultz and Hope Davis, who looks to be playing First Lady Nancy Reagan. (This movie also made me Google whether Angel Studios made/distributed 2024'sReaganbiopic starring Dennis Quaid. Shockingly, they did not.)
Runner
Release date: Sept. 11, 2026
Six words: Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson, action thriller. Angel debuted a trailer for this badboy, in which Ritchson plays a, uh, runner tasked with delivering a new liver to "a little girl that's very sick." Unfortunately, livers go for a pretty penny on the black market, which means Ritchson's character has to fight a bunch of bad guys who really want to steal that liver. Wilson appears to be present in almost every action scene, but doesn't seem to actively participate in any of them.
Angel and the Badman
Release date: October 2026
Angel Studios' equivalent ofCaptain Marvel(that is, a project that was probably greenlit 50 percent because the studio's name is in the title) is a remake of the 1947 John Wayne Western of the same name. Zachary Levi and Neal McDonough, who have been in several movies kinda like this in recent years, are starring alongside Tommy Lee Jones. If you're wondering how Angel landed the rights to a classic Western, it turns out the copyright for the original movie lapsed in 1975, which meant it entered the public domain and could be remade by anyone — including the Hallmark Channel, which made its own version in 2009.
Hershey
Release date: Thanksgiving 2026
In what is hopefully the mostThe Studio-coded announcement of CinemaCon this year, Angel is teaming up withMean Girlsdirector Mark Waters for a biopic about Milton Hershey, the founder of the Hershey's Company. Finn Wittrock, Alexandra Daddario, Alan Ruck, and Richard Kind are starring in what is presumably a behind-the-scenes look at how the chocolate gets made. No footage or imagery from this movie was shown.
Drummer Boy
Release date: Nov. 6, 2026
This one's a doozy: a Christmas war musical about two brothers on opposite sides of the American Revolutionary War, directed by Ben Smallbone and Joel David Smallbone, who are real-life brothers (from Australia, strangely) best known for their Christian pop music duo For King & Country. Joel David is starring in the movie alongside Lucas Leach and Beth Easdown. No footage or images from this one, either.
Zero A.D.
Release date: Christmas 2026
From the director of Angel's breakout hit,Sound of Freedom, Alejandro Monteverde,Zero A.D.is a gritty retelling of Jesus' birth under the oppressive reign of King Herod. Deva Cassel, Sam Worthington, Jim Caviezel, and Ben Mendelsohn star in this one, which showed off a trailer in the Colosseum that appears identical to the one released on Angel's YouTube channel eight months ago.
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Sony Pictures Classics
Sony's arthouse division mostly showed off footage from its acquisitions that have already premiered at recent film festivals, including John Turturro vehicleThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York, David Wain's raunchy comedyGail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, Saudi murder mysteryUnidentified, Josef Kubota Wladyka's dance dramaHa-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, and Stephanie Ahn's debutBedford Park. The distributor also showed thetrailerfor Pedro Almodóvar'sBitter Christmas, which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
SPC also showed an image from the new movie fromSpotlightdirector Tom McCarthy, which has yet to receive a title. Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, Evan Peters, Tatiana Maslany, John Turturro, Amy Ryan, and Jason Clarke are all part of the cast, and I swear I saw Zach Woods in this image, but he hasn't been part of any official announcements about the project at this point.
The distributor also plugged its forthcoming theatrical rereleases ofTrainspottingandThe Piano.
StudioCanal
Paddington 4…and even more Paddington
Release date: TBD
By far the biggest announcement of this three-distributor event came from StudioCanal CEO Anna Marsh, who revealed that a fourthPaddingtonmovie is in development with "world-renowned comedy writers" who were not named working on the script. She also announced that an "animated feature expanding the franchise" is also in the works, which means there areat leasttwo morePaddingtons coming our way soon.
Escape From New YorkandThe Howling
Release date: TBD
StudioCanal also announced that it's developing new iterations of John Carpenter'sEscape From New Yorkand Joe Dante'sThe Howling. Filmmakers and stars were not mentioned in connection with either project, and both films were described as a "reimagining" rather than a remake (which might be a meaningless distinction).
Pippi LongstockingandMr. Men
Release date: TBD
Marsh also briefly announced that StudioCanal is developing movies based on Astrid Lindgren'sPippi Longstockingchildren's books and Roger Hargreaves'Mr. Menpicture books. Both of those projects are being produced byHarry Potterproducer David Heyman.
Other literary adaptations promoted during StudioCanal's presentation includedThe Midnight LibraryandViolette, the latter of which will be an adaptation of Valérie Perrin'sFresh Water for Flowersdirected byAméliefilmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Release date: 2027
Director Danny Boyle took the stage to share the opening scene of his new dramaInk, which stars his28 Years Latercollaborator Jack O'Connell as journalist Larry Lamb and Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch. In the scene, Lamb discusses the five Ws of journalism with Pearce (who, what, where, when, and why), and declares that "why" is the least important of the quintet. "Once you know why something's happened, the story's over. It's dead," he opines. The footage also showed a disturbing rendering of a masked man appearing to attempt a home-invasion-slash-murder.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
Release date: Sept. 18, 2026
In perhaps the most delightful footage shown in Monday's afternoon presentation, Shaun the Sheep and his farm-dwelling friends cower in fear as the titular beast arrives in their home. The highlight of the sequence is a parody of thePsychoshower scene, part of which was shown in the teaser released last month.
Everybody Wants to F--- Me
Hugh Spearing, the company's EVP Global Marketing and Distribution, introduced a teaser for this raunchily-named new dark comedy ("which is of course a working title," he noted). The footage showed a protagonist portrayed by Taron Egerton in a series of situations aptly described by the movie's title: he appears to be increasingly attractive to every person around him, to the point where his admirers are standing threateningly outside of his apartment and chasing after his car on foot. Doechii's "Anxiety" soundtracked the footage, which also featured Jessica Henwick.
Ice Cream Man
The distributor showed off the teaser for Eli Roth's latest nasty horror movie, which EW debuted earlier today.You can watch the footage here.
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