CinemaCon, the annual film industry trade show held in Las Vegas, has begun (and a good thing it’s happening now and not after The Studio skewers the whole dog and pony show in a few weeks).
Sony’s presentation was last night, and they announced a lot of stuff, such as the title of Spider-Man 4, which is officially Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It will hit theaters on July 31, 2026.
However, they’re stingy with their trailers. Not unlike Comic-Con, the trend of releasing every bit of footage is over, and most of what is shown to the theater owners and film bookers gathered in Vegas is exclusive to them, including trailers for Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing starring Austin Butler, and Kogonada’s new film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, starring Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie.
Still, we did get one tantalizing tease, and that is the cast reveal of Sam Mendes’ epic four-movie biopic of The Beatles.
Left to right, they are:
Harris Dickinson as John Lennon
Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney
Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr
Joseph Quinn as George Harrison
The plan is to release all four films, each one centering on a different Beatle, in April 2028. Yes, that’s right, twenty twenty-EIGHT. Three whole years from now, in part due to Mendes estimating it will take a full year just to shoot the whole thing. Mendes is billing this as the first “bingeable” cinematic event, presumably because you can go see all four movies at once.
I’m very curious how this will work. Will they release them all at once, or one a week throughout the month? It’s not entirely clear. It’s also not clear if people will agree to go see FOUR movies in one month. It was a miracle people went to see two movies for Barbenheimer but remember the loser in that scenario was Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Plus, the average filmgoer only sees two to three movies in a theater per YEAR. So it’s a bold declaration from Sony boss Tom Rothman that these films will “dominate the culture that month”.
It's a big ask to see four movies in one month, even for biopics of musicians as beloved as The Beatles. Will putting four of the hottest British/Irish stars in one movie together help? Maybe, especially for younger fans. But what they really need is a second coming of Beatlemania, they need a Barbenheimer type event to take hold in the pop cultural consciousness to make this grand experiment work. Maybe it will, but it’s hard to tell when we’re in for a three-year wait. Let’s see what kind of hype starts to build as set photos emerge.
Here are the Beatle boys at CinemaCon last night.
