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This week I’ve been watching CinemaCon, the annual Las Vegas convention for movie exhibitors, from afar. All the big Hollywood studios show up to hype their upcoming slate for the theater owners in presentations, revealing exclusive footage and trailers and wheeling stars out to address the crowd. I have no fondness for Vegas and the week sounds like a load of hot air and PR nonsense. But boy, do I wish I was there. It just seems so exciting!
This is partly because the vibes were good this year. The global box office is strongly up on last year so far, and the years ahead seem packed with lots of big, crowd-pleasing movies, a surprising number of which are original, and many of which sound pretty great. Almost all the studios’ CinemaCon presentations seemed to have gone down really well: Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal all had bangers, Disney showed Avengers: Doomsday, and even Amazon MGM did a decent job of persuading everyone it really does want to be a proper movie studio. (The less said about Paramount the better, and that goes for its impending acquisition of WB too, but never mind.) Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan were there! Tom Cruise and Ryan Gosling in the house! Dune: Part Three sounds sick! The Godzilla Minus One guy is making a giant robot movie! We’re back!
I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I know I shouldn’t, but I have a weakness for hype. I think every fan does? And as a video game journalist of long standing, and video game enjoyer of even longer standing, I have had it bred into me by one of the great entertainment industry hype fests: E3. God, I miss E3.
CinemaCon seems very much like the movie world’s E3. While movie lovers might care more about film festivals or the Oscars, the event sounds strikingly similar: Industry people and press descend on a hot American city and pack themselves into large dark rooms to have trailers blasted into their faces and watch smug executives read off teleprompters. It’s a burst of excitement and illusory release that’s really just about building even more excitement. It’s very theatrical.
There are some key differences, because the game and movie industries are obsessed with secrecy in different ways. Video game companies love to be secretive about what they’re making, often past the point of good sense. The movie business, conversely, might as well do all its contract negotiations in public, given how much of it reaches the trades. But Hollywood is secretive about the actual content of the movies, and theater owners jealously guard the sanctity of the moviegoing experience — which is why you end up with the strange situation at CinemaCon, where almost none of what’s shown is made available to the public, who have to source breathless eyewitness reports from blogs and podcasts. It’s frustrating, but it also builds an enviable mystique.
If you’re lucky, you also get a bit of corporate drama, which is another guilty pleasure of mine. This week, Disney announced its own premium moviegoing format — the fantastically named Infinity Vision — seemingly in a fit of pique that WB refused to obediently move Dune: Part Three out of IMAX screens to make way for Doomsday when the latter was delayed to the same Dec. 18 release date. The move is childish and patently absurd. It’s not like Disney is going to build a ton of new movie theaters between now and the end of the year; the biggest and best screens are either available or they’re not. This is hilarious corporate hubris and self-defeating beef on the level of the vintage console wars. It’s a PlayStation-vs.-Xbox, Sega-vs.-Nitnendo-ass move, with shades of the devastating game-sharing wars of E3 2013. I love it.
I know E3 died because it wasn’t working. And in the cold light of day I will admit it was probably just a giant waste of money and aviation fuel. But video gaming is an entertainment business, and I can’t help but feel the now-ceaseless drip-drip-drip of online showcases that the industry uses to hype its wares is more than a little lacking in showmanship. There are no triumphant on-stage megatons anymore, there’s no inexplicable weirdness, and none of the schadenfreude and humanity of public corporate fails.
You know what would have gone down great at E3? Pragmata, this week’s big release. Imagine its baffling trailers and multiple, agonizing delays being amplified by the ultimate megaphone of E3. The game we got in the end wouldn’t have been any more brilliant. But finally getting it might have tasted just that little bit sweeter.
Pragmata shoots for the moon and sticks the landing
Austin Manchester salutes the second greatest lunar achievement of 2026.
I saw the first 15 minutes of The Mandalorian and Grogu
Jake Kleinman has a lot of thoughts about the future of Star Wars.
Can anyone really replace Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn?
Rachael Conrad isn’t sure about this whole Jamie Dornan thing.
Also this:
- The 100 greatest video game quotes of all time: Our latest, possibly barmiest special project made the whole staff say, “Ah shit, here we go again”
- Mark Hamill says if you want Luke Skywalker to be gay, he is: Matt Patches chats to the legendary actor and finds no doubt in his mind about this hot-button issue for fans
- Crimson Desert’s biggest problems can’t be patched: Marloes Valetina Stella finds a game that’s much improved — but only so much
- 2026’s dark horse GOTY contender just hit 1.0 and you can’t miss it: Giovanni Colantonio bangs the drum for Sol Cesto, a truly unique dungeon-crawler
