Asked where cinema operators should invest today if they want to remain relevant a decade from now, three industry executives gathered at the ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience did not begin by naming a projector, screen or sound system.

Christof Papousek, CFO and managing partner of Cineplexx International, led with quality and customer experience. Howard Kiedaisch, CEO of Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition, suggested that audiences increasingly approach out-of-home entertainment with a “go big or stay home” mentality, though he cautioned that what motivates customers varies by market and cinema.

Juan García, operations manager at Spanish exhibitor Odeon Multicines, was more emphatic, during the panel which was moderated by Marion Rosset, President of ADDE.

“For me, it’s identity, identity, identity,” García said. “It must be aligned with your idea of what cinema is for your customer. It’s not about one size fits all.”

That answer became a useful shorthand for much of the discussion that followed. Cinema operators are being presented with a widening range of premium screens, immersive sound systems, branded formats and alternative uses for their auditoriums. But the central question is no longer simply which technology produces the best technical result.

It is whether the technology fits the cinema, its market and its audience – —and whether the economics allow the exhibitor to pay for it before the next upgrade cycle arrives.

Different Technologies for Different Cinemas
García spoke from direct experience operating both premium LED auditoriums and advanced laser projection systems, including Christie’s CINITY format. Rather than positioning one as the inevitable replacement for the other, he argued that they offer different capabilities.

An emissive LED screen can change the way an auditorium is used. Because it does not require a projector or a completely darkened room, García sees the potential for cinemas to function more like adaptable event venues or even television studios, accommodating presentations, live events and community programming alongside conventional film screenings.

“It’s not about black or white,” he said. “It’s not about whether you prefer this or that.”

Laser projection and LED can both provide exceptional images, García argued, but they may suit different applications and different communities. Traditional projection also retains an important advantage: flexibility. A projector and screen can be installed or adapted in spaces where building a permanent LED wall would be impractical.

That distinction matters because technology purchases are often discussed as if the industry is moving toward a single future. García’s argument was that cinemas should instead begin with the experience they intend to create and the audience they are trying to serve.

The technology comes afterward.

When the Screen Is Ready Before the Movie
The limits of a hardware-first approach are particularly evident in the rollout of cinema LED.

García said Odeon’s LED auditoriums are still primarily presenting standard dynamic range versions of films because the supply of properly mastered cinema HDR content remains limited. The screens may be capable of far more, but the content pipeline has not yet caught up.

The problem is hardly unique to LED. Every new format creates what Kiedaisch described as a familiar chicken-and-egg dilemma.

Studios may be reluctant to create, manage and distribute another version of a film until a format has built a meaningful installed footprint. Exhibitors, meanwhile, are unlikely to make a substantial investment until they know there will be enough films to support it. Technology suppliers need both sides to move at roughly the same time.

Each additional format also adds complexity. Studios already manage numerous language, accessibility and technical versions across global markets. New premium variants require additional mastering, delivery, storage and quality-control work, increasing both labor and the possibility of mistakes.

The panel briefly discussed Disney Infinity Vision, the studio’s attempt to identify qualifying exhibitor-branded premium auditoriums and make them more recognizable to consumers. As Celluloid Junkie reported separately, Disney has positioned Infinity Vision primarily as a marketing and audience-navigation program rather than another consumer-facing technical specification.

Kiedaisch suggested Disney may be uniquely positioned to make such a program work because of its consistent supply of large-scale franchise titles. For exhibitors, however, the appeal is straightforward: a studio with considerable marketing resources would be helping audiences understand why certain auditoriums merit attention.

That may prove as important as the technology itself.

Four Questions Before Writing the Check
Papousek offered the panel’s most practical framework for deciding which investments are likely to create long-term value.

The first consideration is the economics of the market. Ticket prices, disposable income and the potential size of a premium surcharge differ considerably by territory. Cineplexx introduced certain high-end experiences earlier in Austria than it did in Serbia, Papousek noted, because Serbian ticket prices were roughly half those in Austria.

The second consideration is local history and audience expectations. Has the market previously supported premium presentation formats such as 70mm? Are moviegoers familiar with large-format cinema? Do local distributors support the necessary versions? In markets with a strong amusement-park tradition, motion-based or effects-driven formats may have more natural appeal.

The third factor is competition. Exhibitors must understand which systems are already available locally, whether a second mover can introduce something meaningfully different and whether contractual exclusivities affect the available choices.

Only then comes the fourth question: financial feasibility.

What is the capital investment? Can the system be financed as an operating expense rather than purchased outright? Will the supplier provide funding support? How long will the equipment remain commercially useful, and how quickly can the cinema recover its cost?

Papousek’s conclusion was bluntly pragmatic: the technically best system may not be the right technology for a particular cinema or market.

A less ambitious installation with a sustainable business model is more valuable than a spectacular auditorium whose economics never work.

The End of the 50-Year Projector
The pressure is greater because the digital cinema replacement cycle bears little resemblance to the equipment economics of the film era.

A 35mm projector could remain in service for decades. Digital cinema equipment may need to be replaced or substantially upgraded every seven or eight years, Papousek said, requiring exhibitors to begin planning for the next investment well before the current one has been fully depreciated.

The original conversion to digital projection was made possible in large part by the Virtual Print Fee model, which redirected some of the distribution savings from eliminating film prints toward exhibitors’ equipment costs.

There is no equivalent industry-wide mechanism funding today’s transition to laser, HDR, LED or the next generation of premium formats.

At the start of the digital rollout, cinemas could sometimes add a modest surcharge for a digital presentation. Early immersive sound installations could also command an additional fee. Those technologies eventually became standard, and the surcharges disappeared.

Exhibitors now face the prospect of repeatedly investing in technology that customers may soon regard not as premium, but as the basic price of admission.

Premium Pricing Requires Recognizable Value
Papousek said audiences remain willing to pay more when they recognize the added value, when the film suits the format and when the overall experience delivers on its promise.

That recognition cannot be assumed.

He cited a Cineplexx location in Vienna where a premium auditorium was installed within a cinema better known for arthouse and crossover programming. Some customers arriving for a weekday afternoon screening encountered a EUR €17 ticket and reacted by asking, in essence, whether the cinema had lost its mind.

The technology may have been impressive. The positioning was wrong.

Papousek also illustrated the demanding economics behind a large premium-format investment. An auditorium may need to generate somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 admissions annually to produce sufficient incremental revenue. With a EUR €5 net surcharge, the exhibitor might retain approximately EUR €2.50 to EUR €2.75 after the film rental split.

That can produce meaningful additional margin, but a system costing EUR €1 million – —particularly once financing costs are included – —remains a difficult calculation if its useful commercial life is only eight years.

Auditorium capacity matters. So does film supply. A premium room that performs exceptionally for a handful of tentpoles but sits underutilized during the rest of the year will struggle to justify its cost.

A Format Needs a Story
Papousek argued that a successful premium format requires more than equipment installed at the end of the production chain.

“The PLF high-quality experience needs a bigger story,” he said. “It starts at the beginning, with the creation and the work with the filmmakers, and it ends in the cinema auditorium.”

Filmmakers, studios and technology companies must collaborate if a format is to become recognizable and desirable. James Cameron’s association with “Avatar,” Christopher Nolan’s advocacy for IMAX and large-format film, and Denis Villeneuve’s work on the “Dune” films demonstrate how filmmakers can become ambassadors for a presentation experience.

Without that connection, exhibitors are left trying to market technical distinctions most customers neither understand nor necessarily care about.

Papousek also stressed that not every film belongs in every format. A spectacle-driven release may benefit from the largest screen and most advanced sound system available. A smaller arthouse title may be better served by a more intimate auditorium, careful programming and a cinema whose identity matches the audience.

Both can represent premium experiences. They simply offer different kinds of value.

Innovation’s Less Glamorous Backlog
Kiedaisch introduced another complication: while the industry discusses advanced screens and immersive formats, it has still not completed some of digital cinema’s basic technological housekeeping.

Trusted Device Lists, which identify equipment authorized to receive encrypted content, remain cumbersome and are often collected through manual processes. Security keys are still distributed by email. Advance ticketing remains inconsistent in some European markets. Live-event delivery lacks the standardized, integrated workflows needed to scale efficiently.

“There are still basic things that we don’t necessarily get right on the technology and operations side,” Kiedaisch said.

The Trusted Device List problem is particularly illustrative. The industry has discussed creating a global, non-proprietary system for years, but commercial interests and questions over ownership have repeatedly stalled progress.

“Ownership of the address book of the industry should be a pretty clear, simple thing to overcome,” Kiedaisch said, “but we’re still not there yet.”

None of this is as easy to market as a brighter screen or a new premium brand. Yet those foundational systems determine whether films, keys, live events and new formats can move efficiently through the theatrical ecosystem.

The cinema of the future will need both visible innovation and less visible infrastructure.

Audiences Still Come for the Film
For all the attention paid to projection, LED, HDR and immersive experiences, the panel ultimately returned to content.

“No one wakes up and goes, ‘I want to go see a big projector,’” Kiedaisch said.

Audiences choose the film, concert, sporting event or shared experience first. Technology can enhance that choice, make it more memorable and persuade customers that leaving home is worthwhile. It can also give exhibitors new ways to use their auditoriums and reach communities that traditional movie programming may not serve.

But it cannot manufacture demand for content audiences do not want.

That does not make technology secondary or unimportant. It means the investment has to support a larger idea: the cinema’s identity, the film being presented and the expectations of the audience buying the ticket.

García summarized the challenge by looking beyond the equipment itself.

“I look to the cinema, not the technology,” he said. “What are you doing with it?”

For exhibitors considering their next major investment, that may be the most important specification of all.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the 2026 ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience. See more reporting from the seminar below.

More from ICTA Barcelona

• Disney’s Andrew Cripps Explains the Strategy Behind Infinity Vision
• The Best Cinemas Aren’t Competing With Netflix. They’re Competing With a Night Out
• Cinema Technology Has Never Been More Sophisticated, So Why Is It Still So Disconnected?

The post Cinema Technology Is Advancing Faster Than the Business Model Supporting It appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

When cinema executives talk about competition, the conversation usually turns to streaming. Netflix. Disney+. The endless supply of entertainment now available from the comfort of the living room.

Karl Geraghty has a different view.

“Netflix doesn’t worry me at all,” said the head of Stella Cinemas. “The theatre down the road worries me more than Netflix.”

Geraghty was speaking during the International Cinema Technology Association’s Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience as part of a panel featuring the organization’s 2025–2026 EMEA Award winners. Moderated by CinemaNext’s Araceli Vaello, the discussion brought together Geraghty; Gregory Theile, CEO of Germany’s Kinopolis Group; and Tomasz Jagiełło, CEO of Poland’s Helios Cinemas.

Their companies operate very different businesses: a single-screen destination cinema in Dublin, a major multiplex circuit in Poland and a technologically ambitious new-build cinema in Hamburg. Yet they arrived at remarkably similar conclusions about what makes audiences choose one cinema over another – and, increasingly, what makes them leave home in the first place.

Competing for the Entire Evening
For Geraghty, Stella Cinema is competing not only with other cinemas, but with restaurants, cocktail bars, theatres, concerts and every other leisure activity vying for consumers’ limited time and discretionary income.

Stella’s goal is therefore not simply to show a film. It is to become the place people choose for the entire evening.

“We don’t just want “The Devil Wears Prada’ to do well,” Geraghty said. “We want Stella to be the ultimate place to go and see it.”

That philosophy influences everything from food and beverage to marketing and customer service. With only one screen, Stella may attract a completely different audience from one week to the next. The cinema therefore adjusts its cocktails, promotions and style of engagement to complement each film and the customers likely to attend it.

“The experience we’re selling for ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ would be very different from the experience we were selling for ‘Hamnet,’” Geraghty explained. “We have to pair the experience with the film.”

At Stella, that proposition is marketed as “a proper night out.”

“People will get dressed up to come to Stella,” Geraghty said. “They’re going to us because of the cocktails, the food and the level of service. That is what we sell.”

The Experience Is Only as Strong as Its Weakest Touchpoint
The emphasis on hospitality was notable given the setting. This was, after all, a cinema technology conference. Yet throughout the discussion, technology repeatedly took a supporting role to design, service and the complete customer journey.

That did not mean technology was unimportant. Theile stressed that excellent projection and sound remain essential. Kinopolis’ award-winning HafenCity cinema in Hamburg includes the city’s only Dolby Cinema and its only auditorium with D-BOX seating.

But technical excellence alone cannot rescue a disappointing visit.

“The experience is always as strong as the weakest touchpoint,” Theile said. “You might have 4K laser projection and Dolby Atmos, but if the waiting line is too long, if the app doesn’t work or if the restrooms aren’t clean, people will leave the cinema saying it wasn’t worth the money.”

Content can bring audiences through the doors despite an unremarkable building, Jagiełło acknowledged. But exhibitors cannot assume that will be enough to build loyalty.

Theile made a similar distinction.

“If you have the best and most modern theatre but you don’t have the content, nobody will show up,” he said. “The other way around, they might come once, but not a second time if the experience doesn’t meet their expectations.”

Creating Places People Want to Share
Jagiełło argued that moviegoing has become less habitual since the pandemic. Audiences increasingly respond to individual titles and the urgency created by concentrated marketing campaigns.

“People go to see the movie, not to go to the cinema,” he said.

That makes it more important for the cinema itself to become a destination – an interesting place where customers want to spend time and tell others they were there.

“Cinema must become a place people like to visit,” Jagiełło said. “They want to take a photograph and inform their friends that they are here, and their friends want to be there as well.”

Helios now considers social-media shareability when developing new projects. At one cinema, a decorative wall made from vintage VHS tapes became an unexpectedly popular backdrop for customer photographs.

“It has nothing to do with technology,” Jagiełło said. “It’s just an idea – creating funny, entertaining places where people would like to take a picture.”

Kinopolis approached its HafenCity cinema with a similar goal. Customers reach the lobby by escalator beneath a dramatic ceiling installation made from approximately 9,000 suspended tubes. The visual surprises continue through the bar and into auditoriums that have each been given a distinct design.

“It’s about surprising customers,” Theile said. “It’s about surpassing their expectations.”

He cautioned, however, that exhibitors should not simply install an obvious “selfie point” and expect customers to cooperate.

“The customer won’t take the bait,” Theile said. “It’s really the whole surrounding. They have to feel it.”

The most effective social-media marketing is therefore organic: a photograph of a cocktail, a glimpse of an auditorium or some other detail that communicates that a customer is enjoying an experience worth sharing.

For Stella, that peer-to-peer recommendation is particularly valuable.

“I don’t think most of our audience are necessarily going to Stella because of the company or because of me,” Geraghty said. “They’re going to go because their friends have told them, ‘This is the experience.’”

Premium Must Be Something Customers Can Feel
The panelists also questioned whether the cinema industry sometimes overestimates audiences’ understanding of technical specifications.

Jagiełło framed the issue in practical terms: Which investments will customers actually pay more to experience?

“People are ready to pay for recliners,” he said. “They’re not ready to pay extra for sound. They’re not ready to pay extra for picture quality.”

Customers may pay more for a recognized premium brand that incorporates superior projection and sound, Jagiełło added, with IMAX providing the clearest example. In that case, audiences understand and trust the overall proposition without necessarily knowing how the technology works.

Theile agreed that exhibitors and suppliers can become too focused on specifications.

“We overestimate the capability of our customers to understand what we are doing,” he said. “They have no idea about nits, foot-lamberts or resolution.”

There remains an audience for distinctive technologies, especially when a cinema offers something unavailable elsewhere in its market. But visible or tangible improvements – recliners, additional space, comfort and hospitality – are often easier to communicate and monetize.

The cinema industry may also be concentrating too much of its innovation inside auditoriums.

“I’m missing lobby solutions,” Jagiełło told the technology suppliers in the room. “Everyone is focused on the screen, the picture, the sound and the chairs. But the experience is not only here. The experience starts at the door.”

Charging More Without Leaving Audiences Behind
All three exhibitors supported charging appropriately for better experiences, though their different business models produced very different pricing realities.

Stella charges EUR €23 (USD $26) for a standard ticket, which Geraghty said is by far the highest cinema ticket price in Ireland. Nevertheless, the 215-seat venue regularly sells out.

“I don’t see any reason why cinemas should be paid less, or why people should pay less for cinemas,” he said. “But we have to up our experience. We have to up our game.”

Helios operates in a market where tickets generally range from approximately EUR €5 to EUR €10, with the upper end reserved for a genuinely premium experience. Jagiełło said pricing data showed that some customers would adjust the day or time of their visit to secure a lower price, while a much larger group appeared relatively insensitive to such differences.

That creates room for a broader price range, preserving affordable entry points while charging more for experiences with clearly higher value.

“Premium must be premium to stay premium,” Jagiełło said. It also requires standard auditoriums and standard seating against which that premium can be measured.

Theile likewise warned that the industry cannot allow cinema to become unaffordable. Operators need premium options capable of commanding EUR €17, EUR €18 or EUR €20 while also maintaining prices that allow families and more cost-conscious customers to attend.

The Refurbishment Trap
Behind the discussion of design, technology and pricing was a more difficult economic problem.

Many multiplexes are now between 20 and 25 years old. They remain profitable, Jagiełło said, but not profitable enough to finance the substantial investment required to transform them for contemporary audiences.

“Most investment goes to prime locations and prime cities,” he explained. “There are thousands of cinemas where there are simply not enough resources to transform them.”

The result is a refurbishment trap: buildings that generate enough money to continue operating in their present form, but not enough to fund the changes needed to remain competitive over the long term.

“If we do not adapt and if we do not change, many cinemas will have no road for further activity,” Jagiełło warned.

That challenge extends well beyond Poland. Across mature cinema markets, exhibitors are confronting venues that still function but no longer surprise, delight or provide audiences with a compelling reason to choose them over every other possible night out.

The panel offered no single formula for overcoming that problem. A boutique cinema in Dublin cannot be operated like a national circuit in Poland, nor can every existing multiplex reproduce the architecture or technology of a new-build venue in Hamburg.

What the three operators shared was a belief that investment should begin with a clear understanding of what customers value – not with a checklist of what a modern cinema is assumed to require.

Content remains essential. Technology is fundamental. But audiences judge the evening by everything surrounding them: the building, the seating, the service, the cocktails, the queue, the app and even the restrooms.

Award-winning cinemas are not necessarily created by doing more. They are created by making better choices.

And their competition is not simply Netflix or the multiplex across town. It is every other memorable way a customer could spend the evening.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the 2026 ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience. See more reporting from the seminar below.

More from ICTA Barcelona

• Disney’s Andrew Cripps Explains the Strategy Behind Infinity Vision
• Cinema Technology Is Advancing Faster Than the Business Model Supporting It
• Cinema Technology Has Never Been More Sophisticated, So Why Is It Still So Disconnected?

The post The Best Cinemas Aren’t Competing With Netflix. They’re Competing With a Night Out appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

At Karlovy Vary’s Industry program (July 5-9), a sharp conversation held on July 6 on audience strategy argued that independent films can no longer afford to treat marketing as something that begins after distribution. Moderated by Deadline’s Zac Ntim, the panel, titled “Audience First: Rethinking Film Marketing Before Distribution,” brought together producer Mollye Asher, whose credits include Chloé Zhao’s “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” “The Rider” and Oscar-winner “Nomadland,” and Mathias Noschis, founder and head of strategy at European film marketing agency Alphapanda.

Asher said her approach to picking projects has changed over time, with the marketability an increasingly important factor. Earlier in her career, the key questions were whether she liked the filmmaker and the script. Now, she also considers whether there is an audience for a project, and whether the market wants it. “I do not necessarily always follow that,” she said, noting that instinct still matters, “but it is something I take into account, because it will also affect the financing of a project.”

Noschis argued that the best time to begin serious marketing work is not after a film is finished, but just before shooting. While producers can start thinking about audiences at the financing stage, too much can still change. Three or four months before production, once the script is close to final, is the ideal moment, he said, because teams can plan stills, interviews, social formats and festival positioning before everyone is consumed by the shoot.

The recommendation, however, also points to a growing pressure on independent producers: marketing is being pushed earlier into the production cycle, even as many teams are still struggling to close financing, secure cast and manage basic production logistics.

Creating Buzz, Prompting Debate
For Noschis, buzz is not something that can simply be manufactured after the fact. At festivals, it already exists in conversations between people asking what they have seen and what is worth catching. Alphapanda’s job, he said, is often to bring those conversations online, so that people beyond the festival can feel part of the momentum.

He cited Golden Bear winner “Yellow Letters” as a case where the campaign anticipated a wider discussion around politics and freedom of speech. By inviting people already active in that debate to engage with the film, the campaign was able to enter a conversation that was already happening. “Online you can never control everything,” Noschis said, “but up to a certain point, we were able to guide the conversation.”

Asher pointed to “Swallow,” which opened just as the pandemic hit, as an example of audience pockets becoming unexpectedly powerful. The film’s themes of female agency and confinement helped it travel online, while partnerships with Planned Parenthood and coverage in Architectural Digest gave it additional routes to visibility. With “Nomadland,” she said, she saw even more clearly how small audience clusters can help build wider awareness.

Partnerships, Timing and Visual Assets
The panel also tackled brand partnerships, still more common in the US than in Europe. Asher said she is currently exploring brands that are already organic to a project, partly for financing reasons but also for broader collaboration. Noschis warned, however, that any partnership must fit the film’s identity. “There is nothing worse, in terms of image, than a misfit,” he said.

That identity work, he suggested, starts with a simple exercise: imagine the film as a person. Is it a 15-year-old skater, or a 70-year-old woman who drinks coffee? From there, producers can ask which brands, influencers or communities genuinely match the film’s personality.

Timing was another major concern. Noschis warned that filmmakers can damage a project by going online too early and revealing too much about its progress. If a film has spent months or even years chasing a festival slot, the industry may start to perceive it as old. “This industry likes fresh meat every month,” he said. Materials should be created early, but not necessarily published early.

Asher agreed, adding that a press announcement only helps if there is a clear call to action, such as a market or financing push. Holding back images can also allow a team to choose the right trade publication for a first look and shape the public perception of the film.

Noschis was blunt about one practical requirement: hire a still photographer. “Get a still photographer to take proper stills, not screenshots,” he said. He added that poster designers need character portraits and images that actually communicate the tone of the film. Too often, he said, comedies arrive with no images that look funny.

In that sense, the discussion made clear that “audience first” is not just a strategic mindset, but a cost line. For smaller productions, the challenge is not only knowing what materials should be created, but finding the resources to create them properly before a distributor or sales agent is fully on board.

Old Gatekeepers Still Matter
The discussion also returned repeatedly to the enduring power of trade reviews. Noschis said buyers still rely heavily on a handful of major trades – Screen International, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline – even as the media landscape has fragmented. “Reviews are still extremely important,” he said, but relying only on them is dangerous. He cited Irish coming-of-age drama “The Quiet Girl,” which initially struggled to secure reviews out of Berlin’s Generation section, but built visibility through social media, later growing into an Oscar-nominated success.

That tension was one of the panel’s most revealing points: while marketing channels are fragmenting across social media, influencers and niche communities, the industry’s core validation mechanisms remain strikingly concentrated around a small number of festivals and trade publications.

For  “The Quiet Girl,” Alphapanda initially leaned into the film’s Irish-language identity as its unique selling point. Later, for the United Kingdom, United States and Oscar campaigns, that element was downplayed in favor of reviews and festival selections, showing how positioning can change throughout a film’s life.

Asked whether festivals still matter, both speakers were clear. Asher said most of her films have depended on festivals to attract distributors, audiences and reviews. Noschis described festivals as essential labels of reputation. For an acquisitions executive with limited time, a festival selection signals that a film is worth watching.

His broader message to producers was direct: thinking about marketing does not mean surrendering the film to commerce. It means being able to speak to sales agents and distributors at eye level. “Trust the people you work with and be ready to lose,” he said, “but have ideas yourself, because that is what starts the conversation.”

The post Indie Film Marketing Can’t Wait Until the Film Is Finished appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

For six years, Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome has sat dark on Sunset Boulevard, its familiar red-and-blue marquee offering moviegoers a daily reminder of what Los Angeles lost when Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas shut down during the COVID pandemic.

Now, the landmark finally has something it has lacked since March 2020: a credible path toward reopening.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and its wholly owned cinema chain, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, announced Wednesday that they will restore the Cinerama Dome and reopen it in early 2028. Renovation work is scheduled to begin next month, with Alamo operating both the Dome and the adjoining 14-screen complex formerly known as ArcLight Hollywood.

Cinema United President and CEO Michael O’Leary welcomed the announcement on behalf of the exhibition industry, describing Sony Pictures and Alamo Drafthouse as “two of exhibition’s strongest champions.” He added that “the timing could not be better, with moviegoers making clear this year that they love the unique experience of seeing a movie on the big screen.”

The announcement is also good news for anyone who feared that one of the world’s most recognizable cinemas might remain permanently stranded between Hollywood history and Los Angeles real estate economics. It is also about considerably more than rescuing a beloved building.

The Cinerama Dome gives Sony something more valuable than another cinema location. It gives the studio a globally recognizable centerpiece for an exhibition and experiential-entertainment strategy that has begun taking shape remarkably quickly.

Sony acquired Alamo Drafthouse in 2024, placing the circuit inside a newly established Sony Pictures Experiences division. In June, the company made a USD $100 million strategic investment in Cosm, the immersive entertainment company whose Shared Reality venues combine large-scale visual technology with live sports, entertainment and social hospitality. The Dome deal now adds one of cinema’s most famous physical venues to that portfolio.

The deal therefore provides the clearest answer yet to a question that followed Sony’s acquisition of Alamo: What does a major studio actually intend to do with a cinema circuit?

Apparently, restoring the Cinerama Dome is part of the answer.

Preserving the Dome, Reimagining the ArcLight
Sony says the approximately 86-foot-wide, deeply curved screen inside the Dome will remain central to its large-format presentation, while the Cinerama name and exterior branding will be preserved. The auditorium will not be converted into an Alamo-style dine-in cinema. Instead, it will maintain a traditional concession operation while adding Alamo’s repertory programming, filmmaker series, premieres and special events.

That is probably the right decision. Moviegoers have waited long enough to return to the Dome without also wondering whether a server will cross in front of them during the chariot race in “Ben-Hur.”

The adjoining 14-screen multiplex will operate very differently. It will become a full Alamo Drafthouse with dine-in service and curated programming. Sony says the complex will retain 35mm capabilities for archival prints and include premium auditoriums with immersive audio, 4K laser projection and 70mm presentation.

That split creates a potentially powerful hybrid.

The Dome can remain the architectural landmark and prestige event venue, while the former ArcLight becomes the larger commercial engine: a modern Alamo capable of playing mainstream releases, independent films, repertory titles and premium-format engagements across multiple auditoriums.

The famous white geodesic roof will inevitably attract most of the attention, but the adjoining multiplex may be just as important to the long-term viability of the project. Without it, Sony and Alamo would be restoring a historic single-screen venue. With it, they are creating a fully functioning Hollywood cinema complex.

Michael Kustermann, CEO of Alamo Drafthouse and head of Sony Pictures Experiences, called the location the circuit’s “new West Coast flagship.” That description is not marketing hyperbole. Alamo currently operates only one other Los Angeles venue, a 10-screen cinema in Downtown Los Angeles.

Variety reports that Decurion’s Robertson Property Group will retain ownership of the Hollywood real estate, with Sony operating the cinemas under a lease agreement.

For Alamo, the location solves a particularly Los Angeles problem.

Its Downtown cinema has built a devoted following, but Downtown is not equally convenient for moviegoers scattered across a city where a short distance on a map can turn into a considerable block of one’s afternoon. Los Angeles cinephiles will cross town for the right film, of course. That does not mean they enjoy doing it.

A Hollywood location gives Alamo a more central and visible presence near a large concentration of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, studios and entertainment-industry professionals. For a circuit built around distinctive programming, presentation standards and treating movies as events, there may be no more appropriate address.

The city’s cinephile population is likely to greet the arrival of Alamo in Hollywood with something close to jubilation; assuming everyone can remain patient until 2028.

More Than a Multiplex
What disappeared in 2020 was not simply a 15-screen cinema complex.

ArcLight Hollywood functioned as one of Los Angeles’ principal moviegoing town squares. It hosted premieres, press screenings, filmmaker appearances, festivals, industry events and awards-season gatherings. Its enormous lobby and adjoining café gave people somewhere to meet before a film, continue arguing about it afterward or discover that the person standing beside them in the concession line had directed it.

When Celluloid Junkie selected ArcLight Hollywood as its Cinema of the Month in 2017, we noted that the complex was important not because its amenities still seemed revolutionary, but because so many of them had become commonplace precisely because ArcLight helped popularize them.

When the multiplex opened in 2002, reserved seating was not yet standard across North America. Neither were spacious lobby bars, full-service cafés, cinema retail areas or the idea that audiences might arrive early and remain after the credits. ArcLight also became known for refusing late seating, eliminating most preshow advertising and having staff members personally introduce each feature before it began.

These details helped create a cinema designed less around processing customers and more around people who cared deeply about what was being shown and how it was presented.

“For many Angelenos,” we wrote at the time, “if they couldn’t see a new release at the ArcLight, then it wasn’t worth seeing.”

That may have been an exaggeration, but only slightly.

The loss was particularly acute for the local film community. ArcLight Hollywood was close enough to the studios to be useful, large enough to accommodate major events and prestigious enough that audiences actually wanted to attend them. Festivals could take over multiple auditoriums while using the lobby, bars and surrounding spaces for receptions and filmmaker gatherings.

The Dome gave the complex its iconography, but ArcLight gave it daily relevance.

That distinction is important as Alamo prepares to take over the site. The question is not simply whether Alamo can reopen the auditoriums. It is whether the circuit can restore the complex’s role as a gathering place while introducing its own programming culture and operating model.

Alamo is one of the few exhibitors whose brand is strong enough to make that transition plausible. Its identity has always extended beyond dine-in food service. The circuit grew out of repertory programming in Austin, operates Fantastic Fest and the American Genre Film Archive, and has spent nearly three decades cultivating audiences around themed screenings, filmmaker events and a deliberately theatrical approach to moviegoing.

Still, ArcLight Hollywood was not simply an empty multiplex waiting for a new sign. It had its own culture, rituals and loyal audience. The strongest version of the new complex will combine Alamo’s programming instincts with the presentation discipline and social character that made ArcLight influential in the first place.

Sony’s Experiences Strategy Becomes Visible
Sony’s acquisition of Alamo was initially notable because it placed a major Hollywood studio back in direct ownership of a significant cinema circuit.

Sony was not new to exhibition. It previously owned Loews Theatres and later held a substantial stake in Loews Cineplex. But the Alamo deal marked its return to the sector after more than two decades.

At the time, Sony said Alamo would remain open to films from every studio and distributor while becoming the foundation of Sony Pictures Experiences, a division focused on engaging entertainment fans outside the home.

That mandate was broad enough to mean almost anything.

The company’s Cosm investment made the direction clearer. Sony described Cosm as sitting at the intersection of technology, fandom and physical entertainment, with potential to extend film, television, music and gaming properties into immersive shared experiences. Cosm primarily presents live sports and other events inside large domed environments rather than operating conventional cinemas.

The Cinerama Dome occupies a different end of the experiential spectrum. It does not require inventing a new entertainment format because the experience already exists. Its value comes from being singular, historic and impossible to duplicate through an app or home-entertainment system.

Together, Alamo, Cosm and the Dome suggest Sony is assembling a portfolio rather than following a single model. Alamo provides a national cinema circuit and dedicated audience community. Cosm provides immersive technology and large-scale live experiences. The Cinerama Dome supplies history, prestige and a physical connection to Hollywood itself. The Los Angeles Times also placed the Dome deal within that sequence of Sony’s Alamo acquisition and USD $100 million Cosm investment.

For Sony, the value lies in having a permanent Hollywood venue through which its theatrical, television, anime, gaming and other entertainment businesses can connect directly with audiences. The complex can host studio premieres and fan events without becoming a Sony-only showcase, while its everyday operation remains grounded in Alamo’s broader programming identity.

That distinction matters.

The circuit’s credibility depends on programming films from throughout cinema history and supporting releases from every distributor, not merely filling screens with Columbia Pictures catalog titles. Turning the complex into a permanent Sony promotional pavilion would undermine much of what made Alamo attractive in the first place.

Sony now possesses a highly visible platform through which it can demonstrate what it means by “experiences” without abandoning the core theatrical business.

Six Years Is a Long Time for a Cinema to Sit Dark
For all the understandable celebration surrounding the announcement, early 2028 remains some distance away.

The extended renovation schedule suggests the project involves considerably more than replacing carpets and testing the popcorn machines. Cinemas do not generally improve while sitting unused, and the Dome and ArcLight complex have been dormant since March 2020.

Sony has not disclosed the renovation budget, the current condition of the auditoriums or which projection and sound systems remain onsite. It has also not said whether the Dome’s deeply curved screen can be restored or must be replaced, nor whether the venue will retain its ability to present three-strip Cinerama.

Those questions matter because the Dome was once equipped to handle an unusually wide range of formats.

During CJ’s 2017 visit, the auditorium had Christie Mirage 4K digital projection, Dolby Atmos, Kinoton film projectors capable of screening 35mm and 70mm, and a restored three-projector Cinerama installation with seven-channel stereophonic sound. What remains of that equipment nearly a decade later, and after six years without regular operation, is unknown.

The building’s designation as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument adds another layer of complexity. The landmark status protects the exterior rather than every interior element, but any substantial restoration of a venue this distinctive will still require balancing preservation, modern building standards and contemporary audience expectations.

Sony has promised to preserve the Dome’s aesthetic character, curved-screen presentation and traditional concession experience. That is encouraging. The real test will be whether the company can retain the qualities that make the auditorium unique while delivering the comfort, accessibility, projection brightness, sound quality and operational reliability expected of a modern marquee venue.

There will be ample opportunity to examine those decisions as the restoration moves forward. For now, the length of the schedule may be the clearest indication that Sony and Alamo recognize the scale of what they have taken on.

Los Angeles Reinvests in Its Historic Cinemas
The Cinerama Dome is also part of a broader wave of investment in Los Angeles’ historic movie palaces and landmark cinemas.

In Westwood, the Village Theatre is preparing to close for a year-long restoration under the ownership of the Village Directors Circle, a filmmaker group that includes Jason Reitman, Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas and Steven Spielberg. The American Cinematheque is expected to operate the venue, with plans for new releases, retrospectives, filmmaker conversations, awards events and festival programming when it reopens.

The cinema recently received a 70mm send-off with Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” before beginning the renovation

In Hollywood, Netflix completed a reported USD $70 million restoration of the Egyptian Theatre before reopening it with the American Cinematheque in 2023. The venue temporarily closed again this summer for further technical upgrades and is expected to return in the fall.

The ownership and operating models differ, but all three projects rest on the same premise: historic cinemas are not merely sentimental artifacts.

Properly operated, they can be strategic cultural assets; venues for premium presentation, premieres, repertory programming, festivals, fan engagement and events that ordinary multiplexes cannot easily reproduce.

That distinction may be increasingly important as exhibitors search for experiences capable of competing not only with home entertainment, but with every other use of an audience’s time and money.

The Village does not need to compete with a suburban multiplex on convenience. The Egyptian does not need 14 screens. The Cinerama Dome does not need recliners, mobile ordering or an endless menu.

Each needs to offer something audiences cannot get anywhere else.

In Sony and Alamo’s case, the adjoining multiplex may provide the commercial foundation that allows the Dome to remain singular.

Tom Rothman, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group,thankfully  summarized the enthusiasm less formally than most corporate announcements tend to allow: “Hot damn! We’re bringing the Dome back, baby.”

For once, the exuberance seems justified.

Sony is not simply adding another Alamo Drafthouse to its circuit. It is reviving a missing piece of Los Angeles movie culture, creating a showcase for its expanding experiences strategy and returning an important gathering place to one of the world’s most cinema-obsessed cities.

For a city built on movies, Hollywood has spent six years without one of its most important places to see them.

The wait is not over, but at least there is finally a date on the marquee.

The post Cinerama Dome Revival Gives Sony a Hollywood Flagship for Its Exhibition Ambitions appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

The news that Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic “The Odyssey” would not hold “word of mouth” screenings for influencers was further fuel for the fire of a discussion that has raged in recent years. Is this marketing tactic – where commonly these more favourable, less critical reactions from influencers break on social media before the formal review embargo lifts – actually increasing awareness of these films, or is it devaluing the work of critics, whose more considered takes only get airtime after the breathless first wave of reactions.

The first reactions to “The Odyssey” flooded online after the global premiere took place in London on Monday, July 6. While there were some influencers and content creators in the mix – those who’d been invited to the premiere and/or seen advance screenings ahead of junket interviews – there were notably more mainstream critics and writers sharing first-look reactions, including Variety’s Jazz Tangcay, who called the film “a triumphant, spectacular epic” and the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw (“a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion”). When the film hits cinemas next week, the discourse around the necessity of influencer screenings will surely continue.

It’s a subject that was a central talking point at the 2026 European Film Market (EFM, 12-18 February), which took place earlier this year. Across various panels, conversations about social media marketing were notably less about “going viral” as a goal in itself, and more about whether online attention can be translated into something the industry can bank on, such as ticket sales, streaming subscriptions and durable audience habits. Across panels that ranged from TikTok’s #FilmTok showcase to a broader marketing strategy session on attention scarcity, one tension kept resurfacing: platforms can generate extraordinary cultural heat, but the path from community to cash remains uneven, difficult to measure and – too often – oversold.

That split was clearest on 13 February, when the EFM hosted “From Community to Box Office: How Fandom on TikTok Drives Impact,” an afternoon event framed around the platform’s growing role in shaping film discovery and consumption. TikTok’s Stephen Naughton positioned the platform as an entertainment destination rather than a traditional social network — “You don’t check TikTok; you watch TikTok,” he said — arguing that this mindset matters because users arrive primed to be entertained, not merely updated. He added that the company’s research suggests three-quarters of TikTok’s audience come to the app specifically to find new entertainment, and described the platform as a “24-7 virtual stage” where studios, creators and fans can meet on equal footing.

Naughton’s pitch leaned heavily on the idea that fandom on TikTok is participatory by nature: users do not just watch trailers but remix, analyse and reframe content, helping titles travel across borders in ways that can’t be replicated through classic top-down advertising. He sought to reinforce that narrative with headline figures: in 2025, an average of 6.5 million posts per day related to film and TV appeared on the platform; and, crucially, TikTok has been working with market-research company Media Control to track correlations between virality and theatrical performance. The topline result, according to Naughton: “15 of the 20 most successful theatrical releases in 2025 across Europe were TikTok viral hits,” defined as titles generating over one million related posts.

From Content to Connection
It was a confident argument — but it also underscored the central problem with social media “impact” claims: correlation and causation are easy to blur, especially when the biggest releases are already structurally advantaged through awareness, spend and broad availability. If a title is already set up to dominate the theatrical conversation, it will almost inevitably dominate the TikTok conversation too. The more interesting question is what happens beneath the top tier: can fandom meaningfully lift mid-budget and independent films into wider visibility, and can that lift be reliably engineered rather than hoped for?

TikTok’s preferred answer is “yes — if you treat creators as partners rather than megaphones.” Naughton argued that creator-led content can achieve up to 91% more engagement than traditional advertising assets, and pointed to the company’s work with Constantin Film, where collaborations across more than 15 releases generated over one billion video views. He also highlighted TikTok Spotlight, an aggregation tool that collects official and user-generated content into a central hub, suggesting that structuring fan activity — rather than merely observing it — can help campaigns sustain momentum.

Still, even within TikTok’s own framing, the emphasis was less on replacing conventional marketing than on rethinking what marketing is: less campaign-as-broadcast, more campaign-as-community management. Search behavior became part of that story. Naughton noted that one in five users searches for content within 30 seconds of opening the app, with film-related queries growing by more than 100% year-over-year — an indicator, he suggested, that audiences increasingly treat TikTok as a discovery engine for both theatrical and streaming titles, with real implications for how release campaigns are timed and structured.

Community Spirit
The panel discussion that followed broadened the conversation beyond theatricals into streamer-first dynamics, using Prime Video’s “Maxton Hall” as a case study of a #BookTok phenomenon turned screen hit. Moderated by journalist and presenter Aylin Kazi, the panel brought together Prime Video EU Head of Social Jacky Meire, TikTok creator Melo Nsuka and actress Runa Greiner. If Naughton’s presentation was an attempt to “prove” impact with numbers, the discussion that followed focused on what impact looks like in practice: community engagement as an “extra layer” of storytelling, where fans dissect scenes, debate character arcs and generate an ongoing sense of participation.

The subtext here matters for anyone marketing both theatrical and streaming titles: viewing is no longer a closed experience. Audiences often move straight from watching to TikTok, effectively recreating a shared, communal space around content — sometimes approximating the social energy of theatrical attendance, but with platform-native behaviors, such as commenting, streaming and (doom)scrolling. The talk also returned repeatedly to the idea of creators as trust brokers: recommendations from familiar voices often carry more weight than classic advertising, while behind-the-scenes access and transparency are presented as essential tools for maintaining momentum.

Yet the Maxton Hall example also highlighted a structural asymmetry: streamer launches are already “built” for rapid online conversation, with audiences able to watch immediately once curiosity is triggered. Theatrical releases, by contrast, require friction-heavy conversion: checking listings, choosing a showtime, travelling, paying. Social media can generate intent; cinemas still require action.

That friction came roaring back into focus on 19 February, at another EFM panel titled “Marketing That Works: Turning Change Into a New Advantage,” which approached the same broad subject from a more skeptical, conversion-first angle. Moderated by AC Coppens, the session featured Marina Kosten, USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future; Adriana Trautman, marketing strategist with experience at Paramount and Prime Video; and Oliver Fegan, co-founder and CEO of usheru, a marketing technology company supporting distributors across 30 countries. Where the TikTok session argued that fandom can drive measurable impact, this panel repeatedly asked: measurable how, and at what rate?

Under the Influence
Kosten framed the current environment as a brutal attention economy — “Content is everywhere, and attention is increasingly a zero-sum game,” she said — arguing that marketers often have mere seconds to communicate not just what a film is, but where and when to see it. “If people remember the where and the when, they are much more likely to convert,” she added, stressing that basic clarity is frequently overlooked even as campaigns chase novelty.

Trautman offered a blunt corrective to influencer-era wishful thinking: “Just because you cast an influencer, it does not mean their audience will convert,” she said — and rightly so. In other words, social reach is not the same as audience action — especially when the “influencer” relationship to the title is thin, transactional or obviously paid. In a market that sometimes treats social as a magic shortcut, her point landed as a necessary deflation.

Fegan then provided the kind of statistic that complicates almost any platform-led narrative of conversion: TikTok-driven traffic, he said, converted at just 0.1% when moving from platform to ticket purchase. That figure doesn’t mean TikTok is “ineffective” — it may still be powerful at awareness, discovery and cultural signaling — but it does force a tougher reading of what social media is doing at each stage of the funnel. If the jump from scroll to sale is that small, then campaigns live or die on what happens next: retargeting, repetition, and a cross-platform system that keeps nudging the interested-but-not-yet-committed audience until the friction is overcome.

In that sense, the most actionable ideas in the “Marketing That Works” session were not about chasing virality, but about engineering follow-through. Fegan stressed retargeting as essential — those who show interest but don’t purchase must be approached multiple times, often via automated but personalized messaging. The panel also turned to first-party data, arguing that direct relationships with audiences — through tools like usheru, cinema websites, email lists and smaller communities (including Discord) — are increasingly valuable in a landscape where platform metrics can be opaque and platform algorithms can shift overnight.

The panel’s European-vs-US contrast also sharpened the conversation. In the US, mass marketing remains dominant, supported by budgets that are simply out of reach for most European distributors. Fegan noted, “In Europe, distributors might spend EUR €3,000 (USD $3,425 to market a film in France,” and argued that such constraints force European campaigns to be smarter: niche targeting, community-building and direct audience relationships rather than scale-led saturation.

There was also a recurring emphasis on habit-building. Trautman and Kosten both argued that younger audiences will still go to cinemas, but often for events that feel communal — fandom experiences that resemble concerts or social gatherings. Trautman put it plainly: “They aren’t going for cinema itself; they’re going for connection with peers and shared fandoms.” In that framing, the real competition is not other films but other forms of connection — and the strategic goal becomes making theatrical attendance feel like participation rather than consumption.

Under the Influence
So what were the key takeaways from EFM 2026 overall, on social media marketing for films? Conversations and analysis were more measured than the usual hype cycles, but some contradictions persist.

On one side, TikTok’s case is persuasive in cultural terms: it is undeniably a major arena where audiences discover, discuss and reshape film and TV narratives, and where communities can form quickly around titles, talent and moments. Naughton’s insistence that fandom is “participatory, personal and perpetual” captures something real about contemporary audience behavior, especially when conversation can outlive opening weekend.

This is a point that was emphasised by more recent FilmTok research, released in April 2026. It bears noting that the research was conducted by TikTok and Cinema United, with support from Comscore. The findings proudly claim that TikTok conversation can lead to box office staying power, beyond the opening weekend buzz. Looking at four varied (albeit high-profile) examples — “The Housemaid”, “Sinners”, “Wicked: For Good”, and “Zootopia 2” — the report studies the correlation between increased TikTok activity tied a title, and strong box office holds. Of course, correlation isn’t causation, and buzzy box office hits could be seen to be driving the conversation on social media, rather than interpreting the relationship to be working in the opposite direction, but there were also positive findings relating to increases in #FilmTok and #MovieTok posts (up 55% year on year), and TikTok surveys indicating that 47% of users polled said they’d discovered new films via the platform, and 36% said they’d purchased a ticket as a result. Is short-form social media video the new watercooler?

“This report reinforces what we know to be true: that moviegoing is a cultural experience that resonates deeply with audiences,” said Michael O’Leary, President and CEO of Cinema United. “The data shows that when films connect with communities on TikTok, people come to theatres. That is good for our members, good for Main Streets around the world, and good for the movie industry.” It’s also worth noting that — even if it can’t be said for certain that TikTok is driving users to theaters — TikTok data could be another valuable tool for exhibitors making programming decisions, by indicating which film are still dominating cultural conversations.

On the other side, the more sobering data points from the “Marketing That Works” panel underline that conversion remains the industry’s weak link — and that social media is not a substitute for fundamentals. Availability, clear messaging (“where and when”), repeat exposure, and infrastructure for retargeting and direct audience contact still do much of the heavy lifting.

That’s why some of the most interesting EFM conversations were the ones that implicitly challenged the idea of social media as a silo. Even panels not explicitly “about” social platforms — such as Europa Distribution’s session on co-operation across the film value chain — kept circling back to a marketing reality: audience work cannot be detached from production, sales, exhibition and long-term release planning. The strongest campaigns increasingly start early, build shared objectives across partners and keep communication tight — because, as Spanish distributor Eduardo Escudero put it, “In our market, we only get one shot.” In a world of compressed windows and overstretched attention, that single shot at getting audiences in seats early on in the theatrical run has to be aligned across every link in the chain.

The biggest question, then, is not whether fandom can move audiences — clearly, sometimes it can — but whether the industry is building repeatable systems around that ability. The “Minecraft initiative” type of thinking — meeting audiences inside the spaces where they already play, create and socialise — can sound visionary, and it may well work for certain IP-driven titles and youth-skewing brands. But EFM’s more grounded voices would likely insist on two tests before celebrating any such initiative: show the conversion path, and show the cost per conversion compared to alternatives. Without that, innovation risks becoming experimentation.

Finally, there is the issue of credibility. Social marketing thrives on authenticity; film marketing often defaults to polish. The gap between those two aesthetics is where a lot of campaigns fail. The EFM panels repeatedly hinted at the same underlying principle: the most effective social strategies treat audiences as collaborators rather than targets — and treat creators not as add-ons, but as culturally fluent partners who can translate a film into platform-native language. A film like “The Odyssey,” with the built in appeal of Christopher Nolan – a rare crossover filmmaker as beloved by critics and cinephiles as mainstream audiences – might be big enough to be able to skip influencer screenings. But like many Nolan success stories, it could yet prove to be an exception rather than a rule.

The post Social Media, Fandom and the Hard Question of Conversion appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

That was the central argument emerging from the Cannes Docs panel “Micro Cinemas and Macro Impact: Independent Exhibition as a Social and Communal Practice,” held on 16 May at The Viewpoint, Lérins, and curated by DAE – Documentary Association of Europe. Moderated by Jeremy Chua, producer at Potocol and executive director of the Singapore International Film Festival, the session brought together Ruun Nuur, documentary programmer at the Vancouver International Film Festival and co-founder of No Evil Eye Cinema; Kira Simon-Kennedy, film producer and volunteer member of Paris’ La Clef collective; and Can Sungu, artistic director of Berlin’s SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA.

Chua opened the discussion by asking how such spaces address audiences underserved by conventional distribution, in a context where the Marché du Film itself embodies a traditional structure of buying and selling films.

For Simon-Kennedy, the answer lies in programming films that audiences are unlikely to encounter elsewhere. Speaking from the perspective of La Clef, a collective-run Paris cinema, she said the group’s work was driven by frustration with what is typically shown. “One of the guiding editorial lines, if there is one in a giant collective, is movies that aren’t shown elsewhere,” she explained. The aim was not to repeat “the same dead white guys,” but to look around the world for films that open up other histories and political memories.

Simon-Kennedy linked this directly to France’s colonial legacy and to gaps in cultural education. She cited the importance of showing films connected to independence movements, noting that works such as “The Battle of Algiers” had long histories of censorship or limited visibility in France. In that sense, programming becomes a way of “rectifying what’s not taught,” and of pushing back against what she called a “failed canon.”

Sungu argued that independent exhibition spaces can also offer distributors and producers a more meaningful route to audiences than some conventional festival strategies. While acknowledging the continued importance of premieres, he said that a small festival screening in a city may not always reach the communities a film is actually speaking to. By contrast, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA can sometimes screen a film three or four times, bringing it into contact with communities that are ready to engage with it.

“We are putting a lot of effort into finding the right communities, to bring the right film with the communities that they are really interested in,” he said. For Sungu, the value lies not only in attendance figures, but in the “discourse space” that opens around a screening, where audiences talk, argue, reflect and even dislike a film together. “I think this belongs to the cinema and this happens also in this physical space of cinema,” he added.

Nuur described how No Evil Eye Cinema’s own model emerged almost accidentally. When the collective first toured its programme “Sequence 01: Diasporic Reckoning”, it brought a new film and filmmaker to each town. “What we didn’t know at the time is we were creating a distribution model for this programme of short films that we would take all over the place,” she recalled.

Because No Evil Eye Cinema did not initially have access to sales agents or distributors, it used the networks it did have. Nuur, whose background is in film criticism, said the organisation made a point of inviting critics, editors, writers and festival programmers to screenings so that emerging filmmakers could receive coverage and visibility. The programme mixed first-time filmmakers with more established names, and this created a responsibility to support all of them beyond the single screening event.

Futureproofing Engagement
Looking ahead, Nuur said the collective is interested in working with a streaming platform that could host grouped programmes and pay filmmakers, expanding access beyond physical venues. She also described plans for masterclasses involving contemporary film workers, from cinematographers and directors to archivists and preservationists, as a way to connect audiences more deeply with artistic practice.

Sungu also pointed to SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA’s “Cinema of Harmony” project, launched in 2022, which brings together alternative cinema practices around the world, with a focus on the Global South while also involving European partners. The initiative shares films between micro cinemas, supports subtitling and allows works to circulate across different cities and linguistic contexts. He suggested that these models may eventually create new synergies with distributors.

The conversation became more urgent when an audience member raised the lack of cinemas in low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour, particularly in New York. Simon-Kennedy responded by connecting cultural access to wider systems of inequality. “There’s an enormous lack of access,” she underscored. “There’s an overconcentration of resources, but not just cultural – like medical, educational – in the wealthiest, whitest neighbourhoods because of racism and segregation.”

Nuur made a similar comparison, saying the lack of cinemas in Black, brown and low-income neighbourhoods resembled the existence of food deserts. “Film, art, cultural centres are a source of nourishment in a way like food is,” she said. He pointed to grassroots initiatives such as Alfreda Cinema in New York and Cinespeak in Philadelphia as examples of organisations bringing films directly to communities rather than expecting audiences to travel to institutional spaces.

For Sungu, the key was trust. He expressed scepticism about top-down outreach policies aimed at BIPOC communities, arguing that meaningful audience-building can only work through organic relationships. “I don’t believe in these kind of outreach policies that some institutions are doing,” he said. “This can only function if the organic relation is basically functioning.”

The speakers also discussed practical tools: La Clef’s printed flyers distributed in local markets, No Evil Eye Cinema’s press outreach and partnerships with institutions connected to filmmakers, and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA’s use of Q&As, conversations and even WhatsApp groups where communities organise outside mainstream social media platforms.

Across the session, micro cinemas emerged not as marginal alternatives, but as living infrastructures: spaces where distribution, access, criticism, community and care can be rebuilt from the ground up.

The post Micro Cinemas, Major Impact: How Grassroots Exhibitors are Rebuilding Film Culture appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

The headline numbers read as stability rather than rebound. Cinemas across the trade body’s 39 territories generated EUR €6.875 billion (USD $7.84 billion) at the box office in 2025, down 1.2% from 2024, while admissions fell harder, down 4.4% to 873.2 million tickets. Part of that gap is a pricing story: the implied average spend per admission across Europe rose from about EUR €7.62 (USD 8.69) in 2024 to roughly EUR €7.88 (USD $8.98) in 2025, an increase of just over 3%. The topline held up in part because tickets cost more, not because more of them were sold — a pattern that recurs market by market, not just in the continent-wide total.

“Although 2025 did not present as significant a step on the road to recovery… as many hoped,” wrote Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association and UNIC’s outgoing president, in the report’s opening section, “there were still many positive signals” for the sector. That caveat matters: the 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes continued to ripple through the 2025 release calendar, contributing to an uneven schedule of U.S. titles, while several countries lacked the breakout domestic hits that lifted attendance the year before. Europe did not move as one market in 2025 — it rarely does, but this year made the differences unusually visible.

A Patchwork of National Results
Box office grew year over year in 17 markets, including Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ukraine; France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Belgium, among others, declined.

The UK was the cleanest growth story among major Western markets: box office reached GBP £990.5 million (USD $1.36 billion), up 1.2%. “A Minecraft Movie” was the year’s top-grossing title at GBP £52.3 million (USD $69.4 million), while “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” was both the UK’s top local release, at GBP £43.3 million (USD $57.5), and — across Europe — the single most-watched European film of 2025, with 11.8 million admissions.

France and Spain show the other side of the price-cushion pattern. French admissions fell 13.9% to 156.2 million, though the comparison is complicated by the fact that 2024 had been lifted by the extraordinary, one-off success of “Un p’tit truc en plus,” which alone drew 11 million admissions. This year’s top French film, “God Save the Tuche,” sold 3 million tickets — the only local title to crack the annual top 10, but no match for the prior year’s outlier.

Spain’s admissions fell 8.5%, to 65 million, while box office fell a shallower 5%, to EUR €453 million (USD $516 million)— a similar per-ticket cushion at the country level. Revenue was up 3% in the first half before falling 16% in the second, while Spanish films held a steady 19% share, roughly flat against 2024 and a sign the problem was thin overall supply rather than a weak local slate.

Where Local Cinema Did the Heavy Lifting — and Where It Wasn’t Enough Alone
Germany delivered the cleanest example of domestic strength translating into real growth: box office rose 6.4% to EUR €924 million (USD $1.05 billion) and admissions rose 2.1%, with local films capturing 27.4% of admissions, up eight percentage points, led by Michael Herbig’s “Manitou’s Canoe,” which drew more than 5 million admissions and EUR €50.9 million (USD $58 million).

Denmark posted the strongest attendance growth in Scandinavia, up 4.5% to 10.25 million admissions, on a record 37% domestic market share against 23.3% in 2024; “Checkered Ninja 3” and “The Last Viking” led a slate of local releases that nearly doubled, from 19 titles to 39.

Italy is the more complicated case, and the one that best captures the report’s central tension. Local productions claimed 32.7% of box-office revenue, the highest share since 2016, on the strength of Checco Zalone’s “Buen Camino,” which opened on Christmas Day, took EUR €36 million (USD $41 million) in its first week, and went on, with a strong holdover into 2026, to become the highest-grossing release in Italian box office history, surpassing 2009’s “Avatar.” Yet Italy’s overall box office barely moved, up just 0.5%, and admissions actually slipped slightly, because Hollywood’s share of Italian revenue fell 25% year over year. Local content did not lift the market so much as keep it from sinking under that pullback — arguably the clearest evidence in the report for UNIC’s case that exhibition needs both halves of the slate.

Across the EU, European films held a 31.4% market share — down from 33.3% in 2024, though still above the 26.1% recorded in 2019. A record 42 European titles ranked among the top five highest-grossers in their national markets, up from 39 in 2024 and 26 in 2023: evidence of a broader, more evenly distributed slate, even as the aggregate share dipped.

Hollywood Still Anchors the Slate
The report does not pretend Hollywood is any less essential to the recovery story. The year’s most widely viewed titles across UNIC territories included Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “Lilo & Stitch”; Warner Bros.’ “A Minecraft Movie”; Universal’s “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and “Wicked: For Good”; Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”; and Sony’s “28 Years Later.”

Those titles supplied the tentpole infrastructure local hits need to flourish — Italy’s case shows what happens when that infrastructure weakens. UNIC’s report argues that cinema-going cannot be sustained on tentpoles alone, nor can local production carry every market on its own; it takes a steady, year-round mix of both to keep admissions from sliding further.

Windows, Mergers and the Fight Over Supply
That argument is why theatrical exclusivity sits at the center of UNIC’s policy section, linked directly to admissions recovery, reduced piracy risk and exhibitors’ ability to keep investing in auditoriums and premium formats. The timing is not incidental: UNIC devotes substantial space to opposing the proposed Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery transaction, citing Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox as precedent, where the combined studio’s theatrical output fell more than 30% despite assurances made at the time.

UNIC wants the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to make any release-volume and windowing commitments legally binding rather than voluntary — a fight that will shape exhibitor supply conversations well beyond this CineEurope. With fewer studios controlling more must-see content, the risk is not only a further shift in bargaining power away from cinemas, but a narrower and less diverse release pipeline overall.

Momentum Builds Into 2026
The report closes on a more optimistic note than 2025’s figures alone suggest. December 2025 generated $3.5 billion at the worldwide box office, the strongest December since 2019 and up 10% year over year, momentum that carried into the first quarter of 2026, with more than 15 European territories posting double-digit growth. Gower Street Analytics has revised its 2026 outlook accordingly, raising its international projection, excluding China, by $50 million to $18.45 billion, citing stronger performance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

That optimism and the merger fight are two sides of the same argument. UNIC’s pipeline case — a deeper, steadier slate, with windows protected regardless of how the Paramount-Warner deal shakes out — is what is supposed to turn 2026’s early momentum into something durable rather than another year propped up by pricier tickets.

The challenge is making that less of a patchwork and more of a pattern. Whether that happens may depend less on audiences than on what regulators in Brussels and London decide to do next.

The post UNIC Reports European Box Office Held Near €6.9 Billion in 2025, But Admissions Tell a More Complicated Story appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

When Andrew Cripps, Head of Global Theatrical Distribution at The Walt Disney Company, arrived at the International Cinema Technology Association’s seminar in Barcelona on Sunday — one day before CineEurope officially opened — the audience was expecting clarity.

Two months after Disney unveiled Infinity Vision at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, exhibitors, technology partners and distributors were still trying to decipher exactly what the program was, who qualified and what it meant for their screens. Was it a new premium large format? A certification scheme? A Disney-owned quality mark? A marketing umbrella for exhibitor-branded PLF auditoriums?

Cripps is a well-liked executive, genuinely respected across the industry, and his willingness to engage on the topic was appreciated. But if the goal was to leave the room with a shared understanding of Infinity Vision, the session fell somewhat short — less because Cripps was evasive than because the program itself still appears to be evolving. What became clear is that Infinity Vision remains a work in progress, one with an obvious commercial rationale and a number of practical details yet to be fully defined.

What Infinity Vision Actually Is
Cripps framed the origins of Infinity Vision in straightforward commercial terms. The program emerged from a recognition that Disney’s marketing machine simply cannot effectively promote every premium large format screen in the world — of which, by his count, there are a staggering number.

“There are 75 exhibitor-owned PLF brands in North America, and there are over 320 exhibitor-owned PLF brands around the world,” Cripps said. “It’s very difficult — impossible — for us to effectively market all of those brands.”

The brands Disney can market globally are the ones with recognized consumer-facing names: IMAX, Dolby Cinema and ScreenX among them. Everything else — however technically impressive — lacks the shorthand that drives ticket buyers to seek out a specific auditorium.

Infinity Vision, in theory, is designed to solve that problem by creating a single umbrella brand Disney can actively promote: a signal to consumers that a screen meets a quality threshold worth paying for.

“What we want to make sure,” Cripps said, “is that customers understand — we want to set some standards, we want to make sure that we can try to drive customers to the best experience possible, with a shorthand marketing communication.”

That makes Infinity Vision less a new cinema technology than a studio-led attempt to identify, package and market high-quality non-IMAX premium auditoriums at scale.

The “Doomsday” Context Nobody Is Pretending Doesn’t Exist
Cripps also acknowledged the obvious subtext directly.

“We have a movie, it’s no secret, at the end of the year, ‘Avengers: Doomsday,’ that does not have IMAX,” he said.

With “Dune: Part Three” widely expected to command the IMAX footprint on the same 18 December 2026 release date, Disney needs an alternative premium tier to market for one of the biggest films on its upcoming slate. Infinity Vision is designed to be that alternative.

Cripps was candid that the timing provided a useful launch platform, while also pushing back against the idea that the program is purely reactive. “It felt like something — like I said, we talked about it for a while. How do we more effectively market the premium large formats that are out there? This feels like a really good launch pad for that.”

The rollout sequence confirms the stakes. A reissue of “Avengers: Endgame” in Infinity Vision will serve as a test run in September, followed by “Avengers: Doomsday” as the true commercial launch in December.

More Than a Badge, But Not Quite a Format
The most concrete element of Infinity Vision may be the one that distinguishes it most clearly from a simple logo program: Infinity Vision screens will receive a different DCP than standard auditoriums.

“The DCP will be a different DCP,” Cripps said. “We’re going to have different content for the Infinity Vision screens, whether it’s a button… a special piece of hopefully a filmmaker introduction at the beginning… different aspect ratio. There’s different things that we’re working on for Infinity Vision, and every movie I think will be different.”

That matters. If Infinity Vision were only a label applied to exhibitor-owned PLF auditoriums, exhibitors might reasonably ask what Disney is adding beyond a marketing badge. Cripps’ answer appears to be: global marketing support, potentially earlier ticketing and some form of differentiated theatrical content — with the specifics varying title by title.

What remains less clear is how meaningful those differences will be at the consumer level. Whether the alternate DCPs contain material unavailable in other theatrical versions, and whether any exclusive content is specific to Infinity Vision screens or simply part of a broader theatrical window, was not entirely resolved in the session. When an audience member asked Cripps to define what a “button” actually is, he explained it as an Easter egg or additional piece of content — “probably for another movie, or linking the movie to another movie coming.” He confirmed such material would be “exclusively to theaters,” though it remained unclear whether that exclusivity extends to Infinity Vision screens specifically or to theatrical exhibition generally.

Qualification vs. Certification
One of the more pointed audience questions cut to the heart of what has left exhibitors confused since CinemaCon: is Infinity Vision a qualification program — where an exhibitor ticks the boxes and is included — or a certification program, where Disney or an outside party verifies the quality of the auditorium?

Cripps’ answer was honest, and probably the most illuminating thing he said all session.

“It’s voluntary,” he said. “We don’t have a team of people that we can send out and check. We want to work collaboratively with exhibition. So, we said these are generally the standards we’re working to — work with us. Send us the screens that qualify, and then let’s talk about how we can more effectively market those screens.”

At least for now, Infinity Vision is closer to a voluntary, Disney-reviewed qualification process than a formal third-party certification scheme. Exhibitors submit screens. Disney evaluates them. There are no inspectors, no THX-style audit process, and no precise public technical checklist — only standards Disney describes as still being refined in collaboration with exhibitors.

Cripps indicated Disney would issue further details before its Wednesday presentation at CineEurope, including target screen counts. Until then, exhibitors are left with the broad contours of the program rather than firm specifications.

When Premium Does Not Fit One Global Standard
The limits of that flexibility came into focus when a questioner raised a very concrete version of the ambiguity. Some French exhibitors, he noted, have invested significantly in premium screens — in some cases with 4K laser projection — but those screens may be only 12 meters wide, potentially falling short of whatever screen-size threshold Infinity Vision requires.

Cripps’ response was notable for its pragmatism, and for the question it left hanging.

“I think if it’s the premium screen for that region, then I think we should be talking about trying to elevate that experience,” he said. “I think too often we come up with these standards that — one size doesn’t always fit all.”

That is a reasonable instinct. It recognizes the reality that a premium screen in a smaller regional market may not look like a flagship PLF auditorium in London, Paris or Shanghai. But if one size does not fit all, the obvious follow-up is: what exactly is the standard? At this stage, the answer appears to be that Disney is still working that out. Cripps said thousands of screens had already been submitted for evaluation, but the criteria remain opaque enough that some exhibitors left the room still unsure whether their auditoriums were in or out.

That uncertainty cuts both ways. Too rigid, and Infinity Vision risks excluding worthwhile premium screens in smaller markets. Too flexible, and it risks becoming a marketing term without enough technical meaning behind it.

Who Owns the Brand — and Who Else Might Use It?
Those standards questions connect directly to the ownership question, because a brand is only as meaningful as the consistency of what it represents. Disney has registered the Infinity Vision trademark in nearly every major market, with Cripps noting exceptions in India and Japan where prior registrations existed.

Cripps framed that as a starting point rather than a territorial claim. “The intention was not to create something that Disney were going to own and control,” he said. “The first two movies coming out will be Disney movies. We’ve actually presented to other studios and tried to encourage them to come along… but I think people are waiting to see how it rolls out.”

That is a familiar dynamic in this industry. Everyone likes the idea of a shared solution. Everyone also wants someone else to take the risk of going first. Disney is going first — and whether Infinity Vision ultimately becomes a broader industry standard or remains a Disney-branded marketing vehicle may depend as much on what “Avengers: Doomsday” does at the box office in December as it does on the elegance of the qualification framework.

What Can Play on an Infinity Vision Screen?
One source of confusion among attendees was whether a screen that qualifies for Infinity Vision would somehow be restricted in what it could play. The answer, based on Cripps’ remarks and the nature of the program, is no.

Infinity Vision is not a proprietary projection system. It does not prevent an auditorium from playing non-Disney titles. A screen that qualifies for “Avengers: Doomsday” could still play “Dune: Part Three,” or any other title, subject to normal booking decisions.

But unless another studio adopts the label, that film would not be playing “in Infinity Vision.” It would be playing in that exhibitor’s premium auditorium — whether branded as a circuit PLF, Dolby Cinema, ScreenX, 4DX or something else. That distinction may be obvious to studio distribution executives. It was not obvious to everyone in the room.

Pricing Is the Exhibitor’s Call
Cripps also clarified that Disney is not imposing a ticket surcharge on Infinity Vision presentations.

“Distributors don’t set ticket prices, you do,” he told exhibitors. “There’s no premium that Disney’s charging. Exhibitors are free to charge whatever they want.”

That does not mean exhibitors will not charge more. Premium branding exists in part because moviegoers have shown they will pay for better experiences — and Cripps made that case elsewhere in the conversation, arguing that when premium tickets go on sale, “the first tickets that sell out are the premium expensive tickets.” Infinity Vision is designed to help exhibitors sell those seats, not discount them.

What We Still Don’t Know
Cripps made a genuine and good-faith effort to explain Infinity Vision to an audience that wanted and needed an explanation. The program’s commercial logic is clear, and the core proposition — a Disney-led (for now) umbrella brand that helps consumers identify premium non-IMAX auditoriums — has real value for an exhibition sector whose PLF investments have long outpaced the industry’s ability to communicate them to ticket buyers.

What remains unclear are the practical mechanics: minimum screen specifications, the degree of territory-by-territory flexibility, what happens to strong regional premium screens that fall short of global thresholds, and whether a voluntary, exhibitor-submitted process can sustain enough consistency for the brand to mean something at scale.

Those answers may come from Disney’s Wednesday presentation at CineEurope, from the September “Avengers: Endgame” reissue, or from “Avengers: Doomsday” itself in December. For now, Infinity Vision is a program with a compelling premise and a strong commercial rationale — and a lot of fine print still being written.

Update — June 24, 2026: One day after this article was published, Disney provided additional public details about Infinity Vision during its CineEurope presentation in Barcelona, with Jeffrey Forman, Senior Vice President, International Film Distribution at The Walt Disney Studios, referring to Infinity Vision as a “certification program.”

According to Disney, auditoriums seeking Infinity Vision branding must meet several technical standards, including a screen at least 45 feet wide, immersive audio such as Dolby Atmos or 7.1, and brightness levels of either 14 footlamberts for 2D or 6 footlamberts for 3D presentations. Disney has also launched an Infinity Vision ticketing landing page at InfinityVisionTickets.com.

The additional details clarify some of the questions raised during Andrew Cripps’ ICTA appearance, particularly around minimum technical specifications. They also confirm that Disney is positioning Infinity Vision more formally as a certification program, even as its initial public explanation emphasized a voluntary, collaborative process with exhibitors. Disney reportedly received more than 7,500 applications from global exhibitor screens seeking certification and is now reviewing those auditoriums.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the 2026 ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience. See more reporting from the seminar below.

More from ICTA Barcelona

• Cinema Technology Is Advancing Faster Than the Business Model Supporting It
• The Best Cinemas Aren’t Competing With Netflix. They’re Competing With a Night Out
• Cinema Technology Has Never Been More Sophisticated, So Why Is It Still So Disconnected?

The post Disney’s Andrew Cripps Says Infinity Vision Is More Marketing Program Than Certification Scheme appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Over the past several months, we’ve been asked on numerous occasions when nominations would open for this year’s list. The good news is that nominations are now officially open.

Last year, we received a record number of nominations, which made selecting the final list more difficult than ever. As in recent years, we are again applying a set of simple criteria to help streamline the process, give nominators clearer guidance and ensure the selection committee has the information it needs to produce the strongest and most deserving list possible.

For those looking to nominate candidates — and we hope that’s everyone reading this — we ask that nominees meet the criteria below:

1. Candidates should have been working in the cinema exhibition industry for a minimum of two years.
2. Candidates should hold at least a management-level position.
3. Candidates should be able to demonstrate additional industry contributions, achievements, recognition or initiatives. These do not necessarily have to be directly related to exhibition, but they should be outlined in the submission form.

In order to be recognised on this year’s list, nominees should demonstrate how they have made a positive difference within their business beyond their daily work, as well as how they have contributed to the broader exhibition industry. Along with career highlights and background information, please be sure to include new and relevant accomplishments from the last 12–18 months.

These criteria will help the selection committee evaluate nominees. Ultimately, our goal is to make sure candidates are included because they are genuinely impressive — not simply because they are good at their job, which we would assume is a given.

If you’re unsure whether someone qualifies, or have any questions about the process, please get in touch with us at women@celluloidjunkie.com.

And finally, as we say every year — and cannot stress enough — we can’t compile the list without support from the industry. In other words: please get your nominations in. Submit them via this form.

If you’re interested in partnering with us on this project, please drop us a line at sponsorship@celluloidjunkie.com.

The deadline for submissions is 12 June 2026. We are currently scheduled to publish the list just prior to this year’s CineEurope, which takes place 22–25 June 2026 in Barcelona, Spain.

The post Nominations Open for CJ’s 2026 Top Women in Global Cinema List appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

But this year, any talk of industry unity came with an asterisk.

The proposed Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger has divided the industry that gathered in Las Vegas in ways that make any messaging of solidarity look fragile. The Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted to approve the merger 23 April. Whatever happens next, CinemaCon made clear that unity, while still invoked, is no longer assumed.

The Official Narrative
On the Colosseum stage, the message was one of continuity and confidence.

Motion Picture Association (MPA) Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin centered his remarks on a theme of trust; with a 91% public approval rating for the MPA’s ratings system as his evidence that the industry has built something durable. The framing was partly self-congratulatory but served a pointed purpose: differentiating the theatrical experience from the social media platforms under sustained regulatory scrutiny over children’s safety. When Instagram attempted to appropriate the MPA’s PG-13 designation for teen accounts, the MPA pushed back and won. “Let there be no doubt,” Rivkin said. “On my watch, no one will confuse movies shown in your theaters with user-generated content people watch on their phones.”

It was less a defense of theatrical than a line being drawn around what the industry still considers itself to be.

On copyright and artificial intelligence, Rivkin staked out the MPA’s consistent position: copyright protection and technological innovation are “twin pillars,” not competing priorities. The core copyright industries contribute more than USD $2 trillion to the gross domestic product of the United States and supports 11.6 million workers, he noted, and AI should be “a tool that can enhance human creativity, not replace it.” The MPA’s successful pushback against ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 — a text-to-video platform that launched using copyrighted studio characters — was cited as a recent proof of concept: swift action produced guardrails.

His primary legislative objective remains a federal film tax incentive, a campaign he flagged at CinemaCon 2025 and reported progress on this year. If enacted, it would represent a structural shift in how the U.S. competes with Canada, the United Kingdom, and other jurisdictions that have long used production incentives to attract Hollywood shoots.

What Rivkin did not address was the defining corporate story hanging over the week. As head of an organization representing both Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, Rivkin avoided the merger entirely.

At CinemaCon, silence can be strategic.

Optimism, Genuine and Qualified
Cinema United President and CEO Michael O’Leary struck a similar tone of cautious optimism, but with a more grounded focus on the realities facing exhibition.

He opened with a personal anecdote — —recalling celebrating America’s bicentennial at age eight and his grandfather’s prediction that he might live to see the country’s 250th anniversary. “Good news,” O’Leary said, “I made it, and so did America.”

The point was not nostalgia, but resilience. The theatrical business, like the country it has accompanied for more than half its existence, endures through reinvention rather than inertia.

The numbers were genuinely encouraging. Gen Z is now the industry’s fastest-growing habitual moviegoing segment: frequency among 12-to-28-year-olds increased 25% in a single year, and a recent study identified moviegoing as the top leisure activity among young people. Five of the top ten domestic box office performers in 2025 were rated PG. Original films performed strongly. The first quarter of 2026 has sustained the momentum, with Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary,” Disney’s “Hoppers,” and Universal’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” all delivering for movie theatres.

What this suggests is not just recovery, but the return of habit — something the industry has spent the last five years trying to rebuild.

The newly formed Cinema United Filmmaker Leadership Council — led by Jerry Bruckheimer and Emma Thomas, with Brad Bird, Ryan Coogler, Jason Reitman, and Celine Song rounding out the charter membership — was a highlight of O’Leary’s pitch for a broader coalition. Reitman, who owns the Westwood Village Theatre in Los Angeles, appeared at the Independent Theatre Owners Coalition (ITOC) meeting in Las Vegas over the weekend.

But the optimism was qualified.

O’Leary quickly pivoted to the two issues that continue to define exhibition’s outlook: consolidation and windows.

The Window Debate Continues
Release windows remain unfinished business.

The average theatrical window for wide releases in 2025 was 37 days; a three-day increase over 2024, which qualifies as progress only relative to how far the baseline has fallen. Cinema United’s modeling suggests that a universal 45-day floor would have pushed that average to 49 days, a full two weeks longer.

Disney’s 62-day average window in 2025 — and its position as the only studio to generate a billion-dollar film that year, leading the domestic box office for the 12th time in 15 years — makes the correlation increasingly difficult to ignore. Universal’s announcement of a 45-day minimum across all its wide releases effective January 1st drew genuine praise from O’Leary.

And with at least two studios publicly backing a 45-day window, the pressure on holdouts is building. Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman has become an increasingly vocal advocate for restoring meaningful windows, having argued on the Colosseum stage during his studio’s Monday evening presentation (and in the New York Times) for a longer exclusive theatrical window.

What remains unresolved is the post-theatrical window. O’Leary said at Cinema United’s press breakfast that the organization would prefer 90 to 120 days before a film reaches a subscription service. Current practice falls well short.

A Consolidation Causes A Fracture
Meanwhile, the debate over the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger brought industry tensions into sharper focus. Even within Cinema United itself.

On one side: O’Leary, who used his State of the Industry address to warn that “further concentrating marketplace power in the hands of a smaller group of distributors that dictate the terms, windows, scheduling, screen-placement of movies, and access to historic film catalogs will have a real and lasting impact on Main Street and millions of movie fans around the world.”

On the other: AMC Theatres Chairman and CEO Adam Aron, who publicly backed the deal later in the week.

That two of the industry’s most prominent voices arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions about the same transaction captures the difficulty of the moment.

Cinema United’s name suggests a consolidated front. The reality, at least on this issue, is more complicated.

The Merger: Hollywood Takes Sides
If the proposed takeover of its parent company went completely unmentioned during Warner Bros. Pictures’ studio slot on Tuesday evening, the tension in the Colosseum came to a head during Paramount’s presentation on Thursday.

Paramount Skydance Chairman and CEO David Ellison stepped on stage to make his appeal directly.

“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” he told the assembled theater operators. He committed to a minimum of 30 films per year from the combined entity, a 45-day exclusive theatrical window, and a 90-day period before films move to any streaming service. “People can speculate all they want, but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment.”

On paper, it is the kind of framework exhibitors have been asking for. In practice, it is a promise attached to a transaction they do not control.

The commitments drew applause. They are also, on their face, more than exhibition has extracted from either studio independently. Paramount released eight films in 2025 and is planning 15 this year; the pledge of 30 per year is a significant escalation, especially with what many believe will be a leaner studio after potential layoffs.

Aron’s endorsement leaned into exactly that logic. “I am confident that David Ellison is sincere as to his intentions, and truly believe that he in fact will wind up delivering on these commitments,” he said in a statement issued Thursday.

Cinema United was not convinced. In a formal statement issued hours after Ellison’s speech, the organization said: “While recent pledges attempt to address the threats of consolidation to our industry, they are not yet sufficient in addressing our concerns. We remain open to tangible commitments that will ensure a vibrant global theatrical exhibition industry for years to come.”

One way to read that is: put it in writing, Mr. Ellison. Preferably in a contract.

History Is Rhyming, If Not Repeating
The structural argument against the deal draws on history.

The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019 and Discovery’s takeover of WarnerMedia both resulted in widespread layoffs and production cutbacks. The latter saddled Warner Bros. Discovery with USD $43 billion in debt on day one, prompting deep cost cuts throughout the organization. The proposed Paramount merger would produce a combined debt load of USD $79 billion; a figure cited prominently by critics of the deal.

That concern has extended well beyond exhibition. An open letter opposing the transaction — organized with support from Jane Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment and signed by nearly 1,000 artists at publication, with the number growing past 4,000 — included Denis Villeneuve, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Thompson, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Ben Stiller, and Bryan Cranston among its signatories. “This transaction would further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape, reducing competition at a moment when our industries — and the audiences we serve — can least afford it,” the letter read.

At Cinema United’s press breakfast, O’Leary offered a blunt assessment of what consolidation could mean in practice: it would take eight high-performing independent films to replace the revenue of a single average Warner Bros. release.

“I don’t want to create the impression that we’re just going to fill the gap,” he said.

On the question of inevitability, O’Leary was more direct. “Things are inevitable until they’re not,” he said. For now, he added the strategy is simple: “We’re going to play until the whistle or until my board tells me to stop.”

Netflix, Still in the Room — Though Not in Theatres
That informal breakfast conversation was perhaps the most candid of the week.

On Sunday, before CinemaCon officially began, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos had been seen exiting Caesars Palace, after meeting with exhibition leaders on Cinema United’s board. Asked about it, O’Leary explained that the meeting had originally been arranged while Netflix was still in the running to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. When Netflix withdrew from that bidding war, O’Leary expected it to be called off. It wasn’t.

“And so we came, had a candid conversation. In fairness, all of my conversations with them have been candid,” said O’Leary of Netflix. No commitments were made on either side during the discussion.

“I don’t want the message when we walk out of here [to be] that Netflix is coming to theaters,” he said. “I just think it was a good chance to get everybody in the same room together, develop and understand each other, and say, ‘Look, if there’s a path forward in the future, we should explore it.'”

When pressed on whether Netflix could one day present at CinemaCon, O’Leary did not close the door. “That door’s open to anybody who wants to be in theatrical in a meaningful way,” he said. “So if you’re asking me in two years if they were doing a Netflix presentation because there’s half a dozen movies going into theaters, with fully supported marketing and windows, yeah, absolutely, we’ll find time.”

That is not a negotiated position. It is, however, a signal: the conversation is now happening at the highest level.

The Terms of Coexistence
What CinemaCon 2026 made plain is that theatrical exhibition is no longer fighting for survival. It is now negotiating its terms of coexistence — with streaming platforms, with consolidating studios, with the economics of a supply chain that remains unsettled.

The question of who controls the content, and on what terms, is the one the industry came to Las Vegas unable to answer — and left still unresolved.

The post CinemaCon 2026: A Merger Splits the House appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.