After four days and seven massive presentations from all the major Hollywood studios, CinemaCon is in the books. The Las Vegas-based industry event highlights the latest and greatest coming to theaters and the studios don’t hold back with lots of news, new footage, and more.
The whole thing is overwhelming. You go from Universal showing How to Train Your Dragon in full in the morning, to a few hours later, a multi-hour event with new footage from Jurassic World Rebirth, Wicked: For Good, and Megan 2.0. Later that evening, MGM takes the stage, teasing Masters of the Universe, James Bond, and more.
Then you wake up the next morning and it’s Paramount with Mission: Impossible and SpongeBob SquarePants, followed by Disney showing footage from Elio, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, and more.
Best of all? None of that is on this list. All of those movies impressed but the true joy of CinemaCon is in discovery and surprise. Learning about new movies that weren’t on your radar—and getting more excited about ones that already are. That’s what you’re about to read.
Plus, if you want to see some of this in person, all the studios have teamed up to bring a curated, 70-minute program of footage from CinemaCon to theaters across the country on April 22 and 24. Find out more about that here and check out our picks below.
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir’s highly entertaining book is finally coming to the big screen from filmmakers Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and star Ryan Gosling. The emotional, rousing footage looked like it could be the best sci-fi film of 2026. Read more here.
Final Destination Bloodlines
We were already excited for this one but the incredibly disgusting, innovative kill that we saw at CinemaCon really raises the stakes. Read more here.
The Running Man
Anytime Edgar Wright makes a movie, we are excited. He’s more than earned that. But after seeing what he’s doing with this big-budget sci-fi Stephen King adaptation starring Glen Powell? We are basically frothing at the mouth to see it. Read more here.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
This one was almost completely off our radar until we saw the trailer. Now it’s one of our most highly anticipated films of the year. Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie star as strangers who find themselves on a fantastical adventure together as the GPS units on their cars lead them through magical doors that enter into memories from their pasts. It looks absolutely incredible and opens September 19.
The Long Walk
Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence directs this Stephen King adaptation (a lot of that going around) about a group of boys who have to keep walking until only one is left. Mark Hamill is the bad guy and the young cast includes Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, and Ben Wang. It looks intense, violent, and thought-provoking. It opens September 12.
Predator: Badlands
We knew Prey director Dan Trachtenberg was making another Predator movie, but until CinemaCon, we didn’t know what it was about. Now we do and it’s epic. The film flips the franchise, making the Predator the hero as he struggles to survive on a planet filled with even bigger, badder monsters. Elle Fanning plays a character who helps him along. Read more here.
The Bride!
What if you took Sid and Nancy, Natural Born Killers, and Bonnie and Clyde, threw them in a blender, and poured them over Universal Monster movies of the past? Well, you’d maybe come close to The Bride!, Maggie Gylenhaal’s wholly unique take on the Bride of Frankenstein story starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. Read more here.
Weapons
For months, mystery has surrounded the second film from Barbarian director Zack Cregger, but that changed at CinemaCon. We learned that the film is about a teacher who goes to school one day to find her entire class is absent. And not just home sick. The kids all ran into the woods overnight and never came back. The incident sets off what promises to be a wild story and we can’t wait. Read more here.
Now You See Me, Now You Don’t
I’ll admit, the fact that the third film in this franchise finally embraced this awesome title does give it a little edge here, but the footage featuring characters new and old looked like it was a level up from the fun, magic-filled heist stuff we love from the first two movies. Read more here.
Nobody 2
The first Nobody starring Bob Odenkirk was so good that it was even a hit during a pandemic. Now, the sequel is here and the CinemaCon footage showed the character on a family vacation. That temper of his starts some problems, though, and he gets wrapped up with a major crime syndicate. We think it’s going to be incredibly fun. It opens August 15.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
I’m doing my best not to put super obvious things on this list, but when James Cameron shows the first footage ever from the sequel to two of the highest-grossing films ever, you pay attention. Especially when the footage looks so incredible, heartfelt, and action-packed. Read more here.
Mercy
Chris Pratt is a law enforcement officer who helps create an AI that acts as judge, jury, and executioner. Then, one day, that AI arrests him for killing his wife, which he didn’t do. He has 90 minutes to take the 98% likelihood that he killed his wife down to 92%, all while being locked into a chair. It’s a big, fun swing, but we liked the footage a lot. It opens January 23, 2026.
Ballerina
We were already pretty stoked about this John Wick spinoff starring Ana de Armas but the CinemaCon footage, which featured an extended, hilarious, brutal action scene in a restaurant, made us even more excited. Plates smash and arms break. It opens June 6.
Him
You’ve seen sports dramas. You’ve seen sports comedies. You’ve even seen the occasional sports sci-fi movie. But have you ever seen a sports horror movie? That’s what Him is. Him stars Tyriq Withers as a promising college football player who gets injured and trains for a comeback with his idol, played by Marlon Wayans. But training turns to terror as the young man learns the professional is into all manner of crazy cult stuff. The footage was wild and it opens September 19.
Black Phone 2
The stars, director, and writer are all back for this sequel to the hit 2021 horror film. In that movie, children who died at the hands of an evil man called the Grabber helped kill him from beyond the grave. In the first footage from the sequel, it seems the tables have turned. We can’t say for sure but the footage seemed to tease that the Grabber uses the black phone to return from the dead and terrorize the survivors from the first movie. We hope it’s even better than the original. It opens in October.
And that’s not all…
Those may have been our favorites but we also saw awesome footage from Masters of the Universe, Tron: Ares, Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Superman, Wicked: For Good, Jurassic World Rebirth, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Freakier Friday, and How to Train Your Dragon, just to name a few. It was a great event.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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