Amy Poehler, Kevin Feige, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Shawn Levy, and Barry Jenkins all appeared on-stage to discuss their respective projects, dancers and all.
During the Walt Disney Studios presentation, April 11 at CinemaCon 2024, press were allowed for the first time all week to take photos and videos of talent while on stage. It was a fun 75 minutes of footage, exciting appearances, and sneak peeks at what lies ahead for the House of Mouse and its associated brands.
We saw 13 minutes of beautiful, awe-inspiring footage from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, releasing May 10. Gasps rippled throughout the audience, as the camera moved its way through a jungle.
After, Amy Poehler was introduced and talked about Inside Out 2, before showing us a whopping 35 minutes of footage. Riley is all grown up and taking on new emotions. The audience reacted very positively to new emotions, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).
Next up, to every fanboys’ delight, was Marvel Studios with Kevin Feige, yelling “FUCK!” for the first time in a Disney-associated capacity. The crowd laughed along with him, the irony wasn’t lost on us.
This new expletive-filled era of Disney is being heralded in by Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool with this summer’s upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Reynolds and Hugh Jackman returning as the angry, hairy X-man.
Along with that sneak peak, we got a look at some titles, including The Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts* (the asterisk is a part of the title), and Captain America: Brave New World.
Anthony Mackie stepped out to introduce a small look at what’s happening in the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Mackie’s Captain America is going to be facing a whole host of problems, not least of which is trying to get out of Steve Rogers’ shadow.
Director Shawn Levy (also honored later that evening with CinemaCon’s Director of the Year award, a “fake” award according to Ryan Reynolds) came out to talk about Deadpool & Wolverine. He got to show us some extremely meta footage that teases Deadpool’s incoming connection with the MCU.
We got a brief look at other upcoming projects, including some of the 20th Century Fox slate for 2024: Kinds of Kindness, Alien: Romulus, Nightbitch, The Amateur (starring the ever-intense Rami Malek), Ella McKay and A Real Pain.
The presentation came to an end with Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa: The Lion King and a dancing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson with Moana 2. Jenkins mentioned how excited he was to dive into the backstory of one of Disney’s most legendary dads.
While light on Marvel, there was still plenty of juice in Disney’s presentation at CinemaCon 2024 to get fans excited for the upcoming year and in to 2025.