Universal Pictures and Focus Features took the stage at CinemaCon, giving us new looks at major upcoming films like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, Minions & Monsters, Violent Night 2, Focker In-Law, and Werwulf.
The presentation wasn’t livestreamed, but we’ve got full coverage from inside the room. Here’s everything that was shown and revealed during the presentation.
The Snoop Dogg Biopic Still Doesn’t Have a Title
Universal’s untitled Snoop Dogg biopic was the first film featured at the presentation, with Snoop himself showing up to perform “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” The film stars Jonathan Daviss as Snoop (who also joined his inspiration onstage) and is directed by Craig Brewer. The film is also produced by Brian Grazer/Imagine Entertainment, of 8 Mile fame.
“After my brothers told their story in Straight Outta Compton, it’s my turn,” Snoop told the audience. The rapper also revealed that he has a bungalow on the Universal lot next to Spielberg, and joked that the fire department has been called twice due to all the smoke in the area.
Universal chairwoman Donna Langley also emphasized the Straight Outta Compton connection, calling this new film “the spiritual cousin” to that NWA biopic.
Christopher Nolan Talks The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey was up next, opening with a sizzle reel of Nolan’s previous films before Nolan appeared onstage. Nolan remarked that The Odyssey is a story that’s fascinated generation after generation of listeners and readers for the last 3000 years. The director has wanted to film an epic movie in IMAX format since he was 16. He even approached IMAX with a request to create new cameras that could both capture the scope of the action and record dialogue.
Nolan also noted that The Odyssey is a story about family and homecoming above all. He praised the film’s cast and crew, calling Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland the central trio that anchors the film.
Nolan then presented some footage of the film, which was largely the same as the Trojan Horse IMAX sequence released a few months ago. However, this version contained new shots, including some very violent scenes of battlefield carnage and one with Charlize Theron as Calypso where Damon’s Odysseus says he has no memory of his life before the Trojan War and can’t remember if he has a wife and son.
Minions & Monsters: The Minions Get Meta
The presentation then shifted to animation studio Illumination, with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s Jack Black stopping by to thank theater owners for their support. Illumination boss Chris Meledandri then introduced the next Minions movie, Minions & Monsters, which is set in the 1920s and focuses on a group of Minions in Los Angeles searching for a new master.
New Minions & Monsters footage was shown. We saw a group of cowboys on horseback pursuing a thief, only for Minions to roll up and replace the cowboys. The thief flees the Minions atop a train and tries to escape on a plane, but the Minions end up pulling the plane down and crashing in the streets of LA. They meet an aspiring director voiced by Cristoph Waltz.
Another scene shows the Minions being brought to a Hollywood studio lot. They dress up as a medieval army battling Viking invaders. As the film rolls, the Minions pull out various crazy weapons, treating the battle like a real fight. The Minions become movie stars, at least until the advent of talkies when it becomes clear they can’t handle dialogue.
The Minions are then shown losing their studio jobs, but not all is lost. Their human friends James and Henry decide to make thier own movie, Minions & Monsters (it’s all very meta). From there, somehow the Minions place the world in jeopardy.
Violent Night 2 Gets a Trailer
The dark action comedy Violent Night is getting a sequel, and the trailer debuted during the CinemaCon presentation. The trailer opens with footage from the original film, with David Harbour’s Santa saying, “A few years ago, I had an experience.” Now, Santa finds himself on his own naughty list, at which point he loses his magic and plummets into a mall parking lot.
A child asks Santa why he’s on the naughty list, to which he responds, “Maybe I killed too many people. I don’t know.” Jared Harris’ character is shown ordering his underlings to kill Santa. A big fight unfolds in a kitchen, where we see Santa use a cookie cutter to slice off cookie-shaped chunks of skin and bakes another guy in an oven. Then Kristen Bell’s Mrs. Claus joins the fray with a giant hammer and the couple starts killing together.
Focker In-Law Brings the Series Full Circle
Next up was the Meet the Parents sequel Focker In-Law, with Ben Stiller appearing and telling the audience, “I’m Ben Stiller. I am the actor who is not in The Odyssey. I was backstage just now smoking a blunt with Snoop and Spielberg and we were saying how excited we were to be up in this motherf***er.” Stiller also joked that it was always his ambtiion to turn Meet the Parents into a franchise with 15-year breaks between sequels. Co-star Robert DeNiro then walked onstage to big applause, after which he and Stiller bantered for a bit. Stiller also joked, “We’ll see you in 15 years for the next one, Project: Hail Focker.”
The new film brings the series full circle, as Stiller is now the parent whose child brings home their significant other hoping to impress the parents.
The Focker In-Law trailer debuted during the panel. We see DeNiro’s Jack putting Ariana Grande’s Olivia in a lie detector, telling her, “I test all the potential family members this way.” Jack is impressed by Olivia, but Stiller’s Greg isn’t. Skyler Gisondo’s Henry is shown wanting to propose to Olivia, but Greg doesn’t trust her. The film is clearly pitting Greg against Olivia in the same way the original was Jack vs. Greg.
Sense and Sensibility & Werwulf Trailers
Two major upcoming Focus Features releases got trailer debuts during the presentation, director Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility and Robert Eggers’ latest horror film, Werwulf. We’ll see when either trailer makes its way online.
Werwulf is shot in the same aspect ratio as The Lighthouse. We see Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character foaming at the mouth as as we hear a sinister chant proclaiming “You are cursed.” We also see shots of Taylor-Johnson and Lily Rose-Depp’s characters as a family, Willem Dafoe speaking in what appears to be a Scandinavian accent, and Taylor-Johnson naked and transforming. Its all presented in a very Gothic, cold color palette. Fitting, as the film is set in early medieval England.
Steven Spielberg on Disclosure Day
As Stiller promised, Spielberg was there to promote Disclosure Day, and the director was introduced by star Colman Domingo. This is Spielberg’s 35th feature film, but somehow his first CinemaCon.
Spielberg said the film is inspired by his long-held belief that we’re not alone in the universe, which is in stark contrast to his father’s assertion that we are the only lifeforms. Spielberg talked about UFOs being a uniquely American obsession and cited a 2017 New York Times piece about a pilot’s unidentified anomalous phenomenon sighting. Spielberg noted that while Close Encounters is mostly based in speculation, Disclosure Day is more truth than fiction.
“It is an experience, this movie,” Spielberg promised. “All you need to get from the beginning to the end is a seat belt.”
The Disclosure Day presentation closed out with the debut of a new extended trailer. It appears that Emily Blunt and Josh O’Conner’s characters were abducted by aliens as children and now share some sort of forgotten psychic bond. They’re shown using complex math to figure out the alien conspiracy. The film shows shades of Close Encounters but definitely skews darker.
That’s all from the Universal/Focus Features panel. Stay tuned to IGN all week for more CinemaCon coverage.
For more, check out everything revealed at the Sony Pictures presentation and everything revealed at the Warner Bros. presentation.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
