To start off the CinemaCon summit, Hollywood leaders show off upcoming ‘Spider-Man’ sequels

To kick off a bullish conference of movie theatre business officials in Las Vegas Monday, Hollywood executives previewed upcoming “Spider-Man” sequels and welcomed rap singer Bad Bunny on stage.

Every year, the CinemaCon meeting attracts Tinseltown executives to massive casino ballrooms, where theatre owners, from worldwide chains to small independents, are treated to never-before-seen material and A-list guests.

Following a drab edition last August, big-screen exhibitors were upbeat again, with box office receipts finally recovering following consecutive Covid-hit years — not to mention the news that streaming powerhouse Netflix had seen its first subscriber drop in more than a decade.

“What are you doing in this place? Everyone claimed you were dead, that you were finished “Tom Rothman, head of Sony Pictures, cracked a joke to the delight of theatre owners.

Hits like Sony’s recent “Spider-Man: No Way Home” — the third-biggest US movie office triumph of all time, generating $1.9 billion globally — have boosted theatre attendance.

The directors of the Oscar-winning 2018 animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” Phil Lord and Chris Miller, have released unfinished footage from the first 15 minutes of their sequel “Across the Spider-Verse,” which will be released next summer.
It featured a variety of male and female Spider-Man heroes bouncing between dimensions, and it will be followed in 2024 by another animated sequel, “Beyond the Spider-Verse,” which was just revealed.

Sony also showed footage from Brad Pitt’s action movie “Bullet Train,” which will be released in July and is based on a Japanese novel.

Pitt’s wise-cracking hitman paced through neon-lit Tokyo streets before brawling with music superstar-turned-actor Bad Bunny aboard a train in the early moments.

“That’s not my first fight,” joked the number-one Puerto Rican rapper, who was also announced as the first Latino to star in a live-action Marvel superhero film, “El Muerto,” which will be released in January 2024.

Viola Davis took the stage to accept the event’s first “trailblazer” award while promoting her new film “The Woman King,” a historical epic about the female warriors of Dahomey, which will be released in September.

“I wanted to be a producer that championed those tales with individuals who looked like me,” the Oscar winner for “Fences” stated.

Her latest picture, in which she also stars, has been dubbed her “magnum opus.”

Reese Witherspoon made a video appearance to promote her adaptation of best-selling novel “Where The Crawdads Sing,” a scary thriller set in the North Carolina marshes that will be released this summer.

The presentation also revealed new “Ghostbusters” and “Venom” sequels, and finished with a video greeting from boxing legend George Foreman, who is set to star in a new biopic about his life.