Business
Movie theaters make plea for more films, rail against piracy at CinemaCon 2024
Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like CinemaCon — where no matter how many hits the motion picture industry has taken over the last year (and, uh, it’s taken a lot), exhibitors from all over the world unfailingly come together to exude enthusiasm about the moviegoing experience and optimism about the future of cinema.
Flag bearers for the Motion Picture Assn., the National Assn. of Theatre Owners and other major industry players convened Tuesday at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to deliver their annual state-of-the-business address and officially kick off the event. Movie stars, filmmakers and studio heads are expected to tease, extol and in some cases screen their upcoming releases.
There’s a lot riding on those movies in the wake of a box office slump partially brought on by the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, which delayed several movies and effectively halted film and TV production last year for about six months.
“We can’t shy away from the stark challenges of this moment, nor can we ignore this time of volatility in our industry,” said Charles Rivkin, chief executive of the MPA, during Tuesday’s presentation. Washington-based MPA represents the Hollywood studios, including Disney and Netflix.
“Yet no one should fear that uncertainty,” he added, “because after all, we work in a business where unexpected twists can make for an epic story. … We understand the stakes. We recognize the need to do everything possible to ensure the enduring health of cinema.”
Global box office revenue is predicted to hit $32 billion in 2024, according to film analytics firm Gower Street, which is nowhere near the $40-billion-plus heights of the pre-COVID-19 era. But since the beginning of 2024 — when domestic box office revenue was down 20% from the previous year — some glimmers of hope have emerged.
In March, the highly anticipated sequel to Warner Bros.’ “Dune” launched at $82.5 million in the United States and Canada — the first true blockbuster opening weekend since AMC Theatres’ “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” ($93.2 million).
Following the desperately needed success of “Dune: Part Two” — which has now grossed more than $255 million domestically — Universal Pictures’ “Kung Fu Panda 4” notched a solid $58-million domestic debut, Sony Pictures’ “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” posted a decent $45 million and Warner Bros.’ “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” drew an impressive $80-million bow.
Exhibitors on Tuesday also touted the rising popularity of Japanese cinema in the United States, including Crunchyroll-distributed anime hits such as the latest “Demon Slayer” movie and Toho Co.‘s Oscar-winning “Godzilla Minus One.”
Mitchel Berger, senior vice president of global commerce at Crunchyroll, said Tuesday that the global anime business generated $14 billion a decade ago and is projected to generate $37 billion next year.
“Anime is red hot right now,” Berger said.
“Fans have known about it for years, but now everyone else is catching up and recognizing that it’s a cultural, economic force to be reckoned with.”
Exhibitors are hoping that momentum holds despite also weathering several recent box office disappointments, such as Universal Pictures’ misbegotten spy thriller “Argylle” and Sony Pictures’ superhero disaster “Madame Web.”
When the actors’ strike concluded in November, theater operators expressed concerns about the health of the 2024 film slate. The overlapping work stoppages prompted studios to push at least a dozen movies to 2025 from 2024, including the eighth installment in Paramount Pictures’ “Mission: Impossible” saga and Disney’s live-action remake of “Snow White.”
Cinemark Chief Executive Sean Gamble estimated in February that 95 pictures were slated to open this year in wide release, as opposed to 110 in 2023. And nothing spells danger for exhibitors like a thinned-out release schedule. It doesn’t help that the average length of the theatrical window significantly shrank (from 90 days to roughly 35 to 40 days) after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down movie theaters for more than a year.
At Tuesday’s presentation, exhibitors pleaded with distributors to take a leap of faith and commit to releasing movies in cinemas year-round — not just during times that have historically seen heavier foot traffic.
“For my friends in distribution, please embrace digital’s flexibility and offer your awe-inspiring movies 52 weeks of the year to every exhibitor,” said Chris Johnson, CEO of Classic Cinemas. “Eliminate print counts and trust us to make programming and scheduling decisions that yield the best results for all. … If you have a hit, we will hold it.”
Michael O’Leary, CEO of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, also made the case for more small- and medium-budget releases that attract cinephiles, citing prestige titles such as A24’s “Past Lives” and Amazon MGM Studios’ “American Fiction.”
“It’s not enough for us to simply sit back and want more movies,” O’Leary said. “We must work with distribution to get more movies of all sizes to the marketplace.”
This year, a number of potential upcoming blockbusters remain.
Universal is cooking up “Twisters,” “Wicked” and “Despicable Me 4”; Warner Bros. is sitting on “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”; Paramount is distributing “Gladiator 2” and “A Quiet Place: Day One”; Sony is launching “Venom: The Last Dance”; Disney is set to release “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine”; and Amazon MGM Studios is about to drop “Challengers,” starring Zendaya.
The last few years at CinemaCon have drawn battle lines between exhibitors and streamers. During the streaming wars of 2021 and 2022, studios threw an excessive amount of resources and funds at streaming projects in an effort to compete with Netflix.
At the time, streaming was painted as theaters’ archnemesis. But the great streaming boom of the early 2020s has subsided as entertainment companies — reeling from financial losses — are tightening their belts and greenlighting less streaming content.
In December, Disney unveiled plans to re-release three Pixar titles — “Soul,” “Turning Red” and “Luca” — in theaters this year after initially routing them directly to streaming. Additionally, “Moana 2” — originally conceived as a TV series to be streamed on Disney+ — was reworked into a feature coming to the big screen in November.
Though streaming undoubtedly still poses a threat to movie theaters, the tides appear to be turning ever so slightly in exhibitors’ favor as studios rethink their release strategies and film fanatics continue to splurge on Imax and other premium large formats.
“You can watch a movie on TV or on your tablet or on your computer, but you experience it in a theater,” O’Leary said. “And part of what makes the movie so special is the theaters themselves.”
However, exhibitors at CinemaCon did repeatedly express concerns about the rise of illegal streaming and digital piracy. Rivkin condemned the practice as “insidious forms of theft” that harm production workers, actors, directors, writers, craftspeople and even consumers who risk falling prey to malware viruses when watching movies illegally online.
Rivkin estimated that on average, piracy costs the movie theater industry more than $1 billion per year. During his state-of-the-industry address, he called on Congress to enact site-blocking legislation that would prevent internet users in the United States from accessing websites that stream films illegally.
“Piracy operations have only grown more nimble, more advanced and more elusive every day,” Rivkin said. “These activities are nefarious by any definition. They’re detrimental to our industry by any standard. And they’re dangerous for the rights of creators and consumers by any measure.”
SpaceX stock dropped below its initial public offering price for the first time on Wednesday, signaling dwindling hype around the Elon Musk company.
Shares dipped below their IPO price of $135 on Wednesday morning for the first time since listing, a humbling loss for the stock, which had skyrocketed more than 50% in its first days of trading last month.
The shares regained some ground later in the day, closing at $135.27.
The initial offering gave the company a market cap of $2.2 trillion, making it one of the world’s most valuable public companies. For a short period, the IPO also made owner Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, though his net worth now is about $800 billion.
On July 7, the company was added to the Nasdaq-100 after a rule change allowed companies to join 15 days after their IPOs.
SpaceX raised a total of $86 billion after underwriters exercised their right to sell additional shares, on top of the $75 billion initially raised. It was the largest IPO in history.
SpaceX, based near Austin, Texas, is the leading launch services company in the world, with its Falcon 9 rocket accounting for the vast majority of satellites launched last year.
It is also the leading satellite-based broadband provider with its Starlink service. The extraordinary interest in the IPO was driven by Musk’s plans to make the company an AI leader — including plans to launch orbiting satellite data centers powered by the sun that crunch AI data.
The company’s headquarters moved from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024, but it retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Since the IPO, SpaceX has used its newfound wealth to expand in the AI space.
It announced last month that it was acquiring the AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion, with the deal expected to close in the third quarter. The San Francisco company, founded in 2022, enables engineers to instruct software in English to run coding tasks autonomously.
Musk also merged his xAI artificial intelligence company into SpaceX earlier this year. The combined entity recently announced it was leasing computing power to rivals Anthropic and Google at two terrestrial data centers it has constructed.
Since the IPO, investors have expressed concerns about the company’s spending plans and debt load.
Even with the volatility of the last month, there’s still more uncertainty to come.
The stock could fall further as locked-up shares held by current and former employees are released.
At least 20% of the shares will be released after second-quarter results are disclosed sometime in the coming months, with all the lockups expiring in December.
But Space X isn’t the only megacap stock to experience ups and downs early on.
Shares of Meta, then named Facebook, fell significantly below the IPO price of $38 before recovering. After its May 2012 launch, shares plummeted by nearly 50% and hit a record low of $19.69 in August 2012.
The company took more than 14 months to rebound, finally surpassing its $38 IPO price in July 2013.
In the latest lawsuit against Paramount Skydance, a corporate shareholder has alleged corruption at the highest levels of the company, which is battling to complete its $111-billion takeover of rival Warner Bros. Discovery to create a new media behemoth.
Controlling shareholders Larry Ellison and his son David have presided over a firm that allegedly made “illegal promises and payments to secure regulatory approval,” for the Ellison family’s Paramount purchase last summer, according to the shareholder lawsuit filed this week in Delaware court.
Larry Ellison allegedly discussed with President Trump how Paramount’s pending Warner Bros. acquisition would result in a shake-up at CNN, states the lawsuit filed by Paramount shareholder Paul Robbins.
“The Ellisons [won] the bidding war for Warner Bros. by promising sweeping changes at CNN and other personal benefits to President Trump,” according to the 59-page complaint.
The case was brought on Robbins’ behalf by the nonprofit Public Integrity Project and the advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has been critical of the Trump administration‘s policies toward the media.
The complaint noted that Netflix withdrew from the bidding in February — the same day Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met at the White House with then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and another top official.
The lawsuit suggests Netflix dropped out after recognizing the challenges of dealing with the Trump administration and that Trump always wanted to see the prize go to Paramount because of his close ties to the Ellison family, who have ushered in more favorable news coverage of Trump and the departure of late-night comedian Stephen Colbert.
Robbins does not appear to have firsthand accounts supporting his claims, which are based on public documents and media reports about dealings between the Ellisons and Trump. He has owned Paramount stock since 2021, but the lawsuit does not say how many shares he owns.
He could not be reached for comment.
Paramount, in a statement, pushed back against his claims, saying the “lawsuit recycles allegations that have already been reported and already addressed.”
“As we’ve said consistently: No commitments from either David or Larry Ellison have been made to any government body, state AG or federal agency regarding the future of CNN or any other news property, other than the goal to deliver truth-based journalism,” Paramount said.
It’s the third lawsuit lobbed at Paramount this week. On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta led a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general that filed a federal antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the Paramount-Warner merger due to concerns about consolidation in movie distribution and cable channels.
The Writers Guild of America added another antitrust lawsuit against Paramount on Tuesday, alleging the massive merger would result in fewer jobs and lower pay for writers.
Many in Hollywood are opposed to the deal due to fears that another studio consolidation would bring more layoffs, programming cutbacks and a fragile business environment due to the heavy debt burden — nearly $80 billion — that Paramount would have to take on to buy Warner Bros.
The shareholder lawsuit noted that Paramount participated in a raucous event with UFC fighters on the White House lawn in June to celebrate Trump’s 80th birthday and the nation’s 250th anniversary. Paramount has UFC broadcast rights.
The event came two days after Trump’s Justice Department wrapped its regulatory review of Paramount’s Warner Bros. proposal, giving the merger a key green light.
Justice Department investigators reportedly did not have a chance to express potential antitrust concerns when high-level Justice Department officials closed the inquiry — a major win for Paramount and the Ellisons, the lawsuit states.
“There have been some line attorneys in the DOJ that have reviewed this [merger] and have some concerns,” New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James said Tuesday during a virtual town hall with opponents of the merger. “Their analysis of this particular case was ignored by the front office, if you will, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. [the White House] That’s the front office.”
Ellison’s Skydance Media emerged with its deal to buy Paramount two years ago. Previous controlling shareholder Shari Redstone was desperate for an exit and Trump was mounting his White House comeback by battling then-President Biden, then Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump declined an invitation to appear on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” then under Redstone control. He became infuriated by an October 2024 interview with Harris on “60 Minutes.”
Trump filed a $10-billion lawsuit against CBS (he later upped it to $20 billion). After Trump won the election, he had considerable sway over Paramount because it needed his administration’s approval for the sale to the Ellisons.
Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to end his “60 Minutes” lawsuit, allowing the sale to go forward. The Ellisons acquired Paramount in August, then set their sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
“The Ellisons proceeded to remake CBS in the President’s image, bought properties he enjoyed, and even hosted events to honor him,” the lawsuit said. “This helped the Ellisons, but it appears to have hurt Paramount and its media outlets.”
On Wednesday, Paramount said Ellison and other high-level executives had dealings with administration officials but “throughout … the review of the proposed acquisition of Paramount, Skydance has fully complied with all applicable laws, including our nation’s anti-bribery laws.”
In late April, David Ellison hosted an elaborate dinner in Washington to honor the “Trump White House,” according to invitations to the event, “even though President Trump continually insulted journalists at CBS and elsewhere,” the lawsuit said.
On Wednesday, during a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) blasted acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche for his attendance at the dinner while his agency was reviewing the Paramount deal.
Also on Wednesday, the nonprofit news site ProPublica reported Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has accepted $63,000 in free tickets from CBS in recent years — while Paramount mergers were pending.
Times staff writer Ben Wieder contributed to this report.
Grocery Outlet is opening new locations across California, rebuilding its network in the Golden State after closing stores early this year.
A new branch in Ontario Ranch is scheduled to open July 23, and more openings are planned for later this summer.
The location will be operated by independent owners Gloria and Jason Pineda. By the end of August, the discount grocery retailer plans to open stores in Ramona, San Francisco, Clovis and Petaluma as well.
The Emeryville, Calif.-based chain announced the closure of 36 stores in March, including nine California locations. The closures were an attempt to roll back an overexpansion in the wrong markets, resulting in a loss in 2025. Grocery Outlet did not announce which locations would be closed at the time, but they were listed for sublease by advisory firm Gordon Bros.
Among those listed was an Ontario location closer than seven miles from the soon-to-open site.
Five other Southern California locations were marked for closing in Azusa, Brawley, El Cajon, La Habra, Ontario and Poway. In Central California, the Kerman, Patterson and Ridgecrest stores were also listed for sublease. Outside of California, stores in Idaho, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania also were listed.
In an earnings call in May, Grocery Outlet Chief Executive Jason Potter said the restructuring was helping boost the company’s profit.
“These closures are now complete and have improved fleet quality and will strengthen the earnings profile of the business over time,” he said.
Grocery Outlet was founded in San Francisco in 1946 as a discount grocery store chain selling overstock of limited-time or holiday food items. There are about 280 Grocery Outlet locations in California, accounting for more than half of its total store count.
Though Grocery Outlet has cultivated a dedicated consumer base on TikTok and other social media posts from grocery bargain hunters, it faces fierce competition from other budget grocery chains, including Aldi, which is set to open 180 stores in 2026. It also competes with Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Amazon, which have steadily gained customers.
Last year it was also hurt by the lapse in federal food assistance during the 43-day government shutdown.
In the wake of rising grocery prices and economic anxiety, some low-income customers who would once have shopped at budget grocery chains such as Grocery Outlet are turning to food banks instead. According to Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, 1.2 million people visit its food banks per month.
Grocery Outlet’s net sales rose 4% in the first quarter from a year earlier to $1.17 billion. It recorded a net loss of $180 million for the period.
It said it had closed locations as part of its optimization plan. It also underwent a store refresh program, changing products and is clustering locations to boost profit and customer traffic.
“Our value-oriented product offering continues to resonate with consumers. While we’re encouraged by the progress we’re beginning to see, we’re not satisfied with our current level of performance and are focused on the work we have in front of us,” Potter said on the earnings call.
Grocery Outlet shares have fallen more than 25% over the last 12 months. The Dow Jones industrial average has climbed more than 15% during the same period.
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