Yahoo Lifestyle Paramount’s Brian Robbins Touts Slate Amid “All The Noise Going On At Our Parent Company” – CinemaCon
Paramount co-CEO and head of Paramount Pictures, Brian Robbins, acknowledged to a big CinemaCon crowd that it may be an odd time for the company right now, but Par’s slate remains terrific.
“In all seriousness, I’m excited to be back at CinemaCon, and incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished at Paramount Pictures in the midst of all the noise going on at our parent company. We have a terrific slate that our team has put together, and I can’t wait to share that with you,” he told theater owners at the annual Las Vegas showcase.
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Paramount Global is in the midst of a complicated merger with Skydance that’s taking longer than anticipated. It’s likely to get done but is now in regulatory limbo amid the Trump administration’s harsh stance on the media, seconded by his FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.
“We do live in complicated times,” noted domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson. “But one thing is unwavering — people love movies. And they will never stop loving movies.”
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Aronson kicked off Par’s presentation promising to play it straight – but “Well, actually, that’s absolutely…impossible,” he said as black motorcycles with glowing lights and helmeted riders zoomed across the stage to the theme music of Mission Impossible amid buzz over the next Tom Cruise installment.
As Paramount attemps to close its sale to Skydance, Robbins highlighted Paramount’s legacy, which began “over a century ago. World War I was raging. The Summer Olympics were canceled. The Great Flood ravaged communities. And a Hungarian immigrant made a big counterintuitive bet: he believed that when everything was falling apart, people needed a shared experience to bring them together.”
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Adolph Zukor dared to dream that he could give us what we wouldn’t even realize we needed until we saw it.”
“Over the years, that company went through many changes, but one name came to define it all: Paramount.
“It isn’t just the lot, the logo, or the legacy; at Paramount the strongest strands of our DNA are still bound together by the theatrical experience.”
He ticked off a handful of films currently in production, led by Motion Picture Group head Mike Ireland including Children of Blood and Bone, shooting in South Africa; Heart of the Beast filming in New Zealand starring Brad Pitt and produced under Damien Chazelle and Olivia Hamilton’s Wild Chickens Productions banner; and an original live-action comedy from South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free producing. The studio also has a Sonic the Hedgehog film, on the heels of the super successful third film that pushed the franchise’s box office gross well over the $1 billion mark; and Scream 7 with the Sidney Prescott, Neve Campbell.
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