CinemaCon: Paramount Places Bets on Denzel Washington's 'Fences,' Brad Pitt's 'Allied'
By Rebecca Ford
Paramount kicked off CinemaCon, the National Association of Theatre Owners’ (NATO) annual convention with its slate presentation Monday night, giving exhibitors a sneak peek at the studio’s upcoming films.
The studio dated Florence Foster Jenkins with Meryl Streep, for August 12, 2016, and renamed Robert Zemeckis’ Allied, which was previously called Five Seconds of Silence, opening November 23, 2016.
Paramount also officially announced that the studio is making Denzel Washington’s next directorial project Fences, in which he’ll star with Viola Davis. Both actors are Tony Award-winners for their performances in the play’s 2010 Broadway revival.
Scott Rudin and Todd Black are producing Fences, which is an adaptation of August Wilson’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Wilson is adapting his own play, which follows a one-time promising baseball player who works as a Pittsburgh garbage collector, for the big screen.
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The first footage from Florence Foster Jenkins, starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant, also debuted. The film stars Streep as a New York heiress who became an opera singer, but was notoriously bad at singing.
Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, hosted the presentation, which included new footage from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, sci-fi film Story of Your Life starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, and Zemeckis’ Allied, starring Brad Pitt and Marrion Cotillard.
Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams took the stage to present Denis Villeneuve’s Story of Your Life, with Renner praising Adams’ work on the movie. “There’s not enough cinema in Hollywood where we have a strong female, badass lead,” he said. The new trailer showed Adams as a linguist who is recruited to help speak to aliens who have invaded Earth.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows stars Will Arnett and Megan Fox came out onto the stage to present a new trailer for the film, which opens on June 3. They did a bit where Arnett had pizza delivered to the stage, and then gave it back to an unsuspecting attendee.
Jack Huston, the star of Paramount and MGM’s Ben-Hur remake, took the stage to talk about the film, which hits theaters in August. The studio announced that the film has shifted from August 12, 2016 to August 19, 2016.
The studio also showed new trailers from Jack Reacher film (starring Tom Cruise) and horror film The Rings.
The presentation wrapped up with J. J. Abrams receiving the Showman of the Year award. Simon Pegg introduced his Star Trek director.
“We have to adapt and its going to be required all of us,” he told the crowd of theater owners about the changing moviegoing landscape. “In my opinion, it’s simple: there is nothing better than going to the movies and there never will be.”
CinemaCon runs April 11-14 in Las Vegas.
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