Most Exciting Moments of CinemaCon 2025, According to Us
It’s been a week and the dust has settled, but we’re still not quite over the huge adrenaline rush that was CinemaCon 2025! We got to reconnect with old friends of FilmFrog, meet up with seasoned industry professionals, and get to discuss with like-minded individuals how to keep the theatrical exhibition industry thriving over the next few years. From state-of-the-art projection technology to vendors providing all sorts of innovative ways to bring audiences back to theaters, and to keep them coming back, each day was a new inspiration that reminds us why we love going to the movies so much. And it was even more special because, for the second year in a row, we got to showcase a series of amazing videos called Behind the Screens: The Faces of Exhibition, produced for Cinema United.
For the last few months, the FilmFrog team has been hard at work developing, filming, and editing this series of 3-minute shorts highlighting theater owners, managers, and other exhibition professionals across the country - from a theater chain based in small-town Montana to a huge palace in the heart of Chicago. Seeing these shorts premiere at the Colosseum of CinemaCon in front of a crowd of hundreds, as well as seeing th subjects introduce some of the biggest names in Hollywood, was one of the most rewarding aspects of CinemaCon. To give those who dedicate their life to theatrical exhibition a huge platform with the whole film industry watching is a dream come true for our company, and we look forward to several more years of providing exhibitors with the platform to reach the widest audience possible.
Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie
Of course, if you follow the film industry news, then you’ll know that CinemaCon is a huge publicity event where every studio pulls out the big cards and gets to show off their annual slate, revealing tons of exclusive footage and announcing new titles that up until the reveal had been kept top-secret. So, after the event, we all got together and decided what the most exciting titles were and what we can’t wait to see on the big screen this year
There were the usual major franchises, from Avatar to Zootopia and everything in between, but among all the big names in Hollywood, one team consistently wows us: Tom Cruise and the Mission: Impossible franchise. At CinemaCon, Tom Cruise walked out on stage to mass applause and presented the franchise’s director for the last four films, Christopher McQuarrie, with the Director of the Year award, all before treating the crowd to exclusive footage of Cruise dangling from a biplane in midair. This had the whole team on the edge of our seats, and we can’t wait for the rest of the world to check this film out.
The cast and director of The Running Man
There were a few other major blockbusters we liked the look of, including titles like the live-action How to Train Your Dragon and the extended sneak peek we got at James Gunn’s Superman, but one we all couldn’t stop talking about was Edgar Wright’s new take on The Running Man. This Stephen King novel has been adapted once before by director Paul Michael Glaser in a famous 80s action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Wright’s new version promises to be more faithful to the King novel, trading in a closed-off game show set for a cross-country running spree that sees star Glen Powell chased by drones, SWAT teams, and all manner of hired goons. The footage was bloody, violent, and featured some dynamic action and hints of black comedy that Wright is known for.
Another major spectacle that really caught our eyes was the sci-fi epic Project Hail Mary, from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Based on a novel by the author of The Martian, this film’s extended teaser showed Ryan Gosling as a reluctant astronaut brought onto a space mission he may not return from, only to find himself making a new alien friend along the way. The footage we saw was sweet, frequently funny, and huge in scope, so we’re already counting down the days until its release in 2026.
The cast of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another
It’s hard to believe since he’s such a huge star, but did you know that, since his Oscar win for The Revenant ten years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio has only starred in three movies? He may be super-selective, but when he appeared at CinemaCon, he was thrilled to present footage from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, One Battle After Another. Much has been made of this film’s budget, but judging from the early footage, Anderson really delivered on the spectacle front; the stuff we saw at CinemaCon was loaded with car chases, gunfights, and more action than any PTA film has ever featured before. But it’s not like he’s selling out either! The scenes we saw retained much of his offbeat sense of humor and rhythmic dialogue, all anchored by DiCaprio delivering a great performance as a stressed-out revolutionary trying to find his missing daughter.
The megabudget spectacles are one thing, but one of the perks of going to CinemaCon beyond seeing sneak peeks at movies already on everyone’s radar is getting a first look at films you might not even know are being made until you see the footage for yourself! We got to be the first audiences to see teasers for a number of films coming out in the rest of 2025 and the genre that really seemed to dominate and impress us the most was the wide breadth of horror and thrillers that each studio will be releasing.
The Weeknd - Live from CinemaCon!
At the Lionsgate event, we caught a glimpse of the Francis Lawrence-directed The Long Walk, based on the dystopian Stephen King novel of the same name. From the looks of it, the film is going to pretty intense, with the kind of high concepts King is famous for, and it was a joy to see stars David Jonsson and Mark Hamill introduce the first look. Beyond that, we got to see Jenna Ortega and director Trey Edward Shults introduce the new trailer for the psychological horror film Hurry Up Tomorrow, a passion project for musical artist The Weeknd. And if that trailer wasn’t crazy enough, The Weeknd then surprised the entire CinemaCon audience with a live performance of two songs, including his smash hit “Blinding Lights”!
Director Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jessie Buckley (The Bride!)
Warner Bros. was no slouch in the horror department, either, delivering two of the most talked-about titles of the whole convention. The first one that really caught our eyes was Zach Cregger’s Weapons, his first film since the surprise hit Barbarian a couple years back. If you’ve seen Barbarian, then you know Cregger’s propensity for surprising audiences with shocking narrative twists and surprises, and up until the footage was screened at CinemaCon, nothing was known about what his new film would even look like. We’re not going to get into what we think the story is yet, but it’s safe to say that the footage we saw was some of the most unique and occasionally upsetting stuff we saw at the whole convention. Then, in a more gothic, almost punk-rock vibe, we got the first look at footage from Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, a new take on the Bride of Frankenstein legend. The scenes we saw were vibrant, exciting, and altogether refreshing - a steampunk version of a character that’s often ignored in most Frankenstein adaptations.
For those who really dug the body horror of last year’s The Substance, we got an extended trailer from Neon’s new horror film Together, starring real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco who grow closer together in more ways than one. This movie already screened at Sundance to rave reviews and lots of buzz, and this trailer made us even more excited to check it out when it hits theaters in August. Meanwhile, from Amazon MGM, we saw a look at the thriller Is God Is, directed by first-time filmmaker Alshea Harris adapting her acclaimed Broadway show. Vivica A. Fox, an incredibly talented actress who deserves another truly great role, looked excellent here, and young stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson were on deck to give us the first look at this dark revenge-filled tale.
Of course, there were tons of other great films highlighted at CinemaCon and we couldn’t possibly fit them all in one post, so these are just some of the ones that impressed us the most! What were some of your favorite moments of CinemaCon 2025? If you didn’t go, was there any moment you heard about you wish you could have seen in person? Let us know your thoughts on our Instagram page!