CinemaCon 2025 - Warner Bros. Discovery

Despite a few neat first-looks, the WBD presentation was a shockingly indifferent affair, with nothing for 'Sinners' and little we hadn't already seen for 'Superman'

Wow, did Netflix (intentionally or not) drop a giant shit on CinemaCon with the news of a David Fincher-directed, Quentin Tarantino-penned, and Leonardo DiCaprio/Brad Pitt-starring sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. At some point, all theaters (including IMAX, of course) will have to recognize that Netflix poses a threat to the ongoing success, if not outright survival, of theatrical releases. They “won” the streaming war, and the movie theater is their only competition in feature films. This isn’t about good versus evil; Netflix isn’t going to magically change its mind and start releasing a dozen big-budget theatrical films simply because they don’t have to, period. 

Anyway, let’s move on to the Warner Bros. Discovery presentation. Nobody got fired, in case you were wondering. The overall The core narrative was an attempt to position Warner Bros. Discovery as having four distinct “silos” akin to Disney. Simply put, they discussed the various theatrical flicks in terms of Warner Bros. Animation, New Line, WB and DC Studios. Of course, WB is basically “uh, movies,” while WB Animation hasn’t been a thing since, uh, well, even Quest for Camelot was a very long time ago. Regardless, if the movies are good and/or are relative box office hits, I couldn’t care less into what silos they are organized.