Paramount hyped its 2020 film slate with a sizzle reel at CinemaCon. Also known as the Official Convention for The National Association of Theatre Owners, CinemaCon is an annual event where studios tease their biggest upcoming movies to a variety of industry professionals and members of the press. Studios typically unveil brand-new footage (including, in many cases, first-look clips) as part of their presentations, in combination with guest appearances by the directors, cast, and producers involved with their latest productions.
As part of their showing at this year's CinemaCon, Paramount revealed first look footage for several of their upcoming 2019 movie releases; including, the Terminator sequel Terminator: Dark Fate, Ang Lee's sci-fi assassin thriller Gemini Man (starring Will Smith), Alexandre Aja's hurricane and alligators horror-thriller Crawl, and the live-action/CGI Sonic the Hedgehog video game movie adaptation. The studio also unveiled fresh material for their live-action cartoon adaptation Dora and the Lost City of Gold, as well as this May's musical Elton John biopic, Rocketman. And finally, to top it all off, Paramount wrapped their presentation up with a brief sneak peek at what's to come next year.
Related: Terminator: Dark Fate CinemaCon Footage Description
Paramount's 2020 sizzle reel included little in the way of actual new footage, but did feature a teaser for Coming to America 2 with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, as well as a glimpse at Tom Cruise on his motorcycle and a jet landing from Top Gun: Maverick. Beyond that, the video listed several films slated to arrive net year, like the monster horror sequel A Quiet Place: Part 2, the Michael B. Jordan-led Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse, Antoine Fuqua's sci-fi thriller Infinite (starring Chris Evans), the Dylan O'Brien-led adventure Monster Problems, a film adaptation of Clifford the Big Red Dog, an as-yet undisclosed G.I. Joe adventure, and even the animated sequel The SpongeBob Movie: It's a Wonderful Sponge.
Compared to other major Hollywood studios, Paramount has struggled to churn out big hits at the box office in recent years. Case in point: their Star Trek movies are currently on ice after Star Trek Beyond's under-performance in 2016, and the studio's attempt to launch a shared Transformers universe with The Last Knight in 2017 didn't exactly go to plan. They're also in the process of rebooting the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films after 2016's Out of the Shadows disappointed commercially, and are soft-rebooting the Terminator series with Dark Fate, after 2015's Genisys failed to win over the moviegoing masses. As such, it's little wonder they've fast-tracked a sequel to last year's hit A Quiet Place and are revisiting 1980s hits like Coming to America and Top Gun, in the hope of striking gold again.
That said, films like Dora and Sonic the Hedgehog could easily give rise to lucrative new franchises, in the event that they succeed at the box office later this year. Similarly, if Dark Fate goes over well, the intent is to use it as the starting point for a whole-new Terminator trilogy. Something like Gemini Man also has the potential to become a runaway commercial success and maybe even get some love from the Academy for its visuals effects achievements. In short, depending on how things play out over the rest of the year, the outlook for Paramount could be a whole lot rosier (or the opposite) by the time 2020 actually rolls around.
MORE:Â Gemini Man CinemaCon Footage Description
