Warner Bros has doled out a Godzilla-sized serving of new footage in a marathon presentation at CinemaCon to promote its upcoming films including The Joker, It: Chapter Two and The Goldfinch.
The audience at the official convention of the National Association of Theatre Owners got some goosebumps after watching a scene from the It sequel where Beverly Marsh, played by Jessica Chastain, goes back to her father’s house and is surprised to find an older woman living there instead.
The young cast of It stood aside their grown Losers’ Club counterparts of It: Chapter Two on stage, including Chastain, Bill Hader, James McAvoy and Isaiah Mustafa.
Sophia Lillis, who played the young Beverly Marsh in the first film, laughed that she had kind of predicted that Chastain would play the adult version of her.
She had worked with director Andy Muschietti and “we kind of look alike”, she said.
Director Todd Phillips, no stranger to Las Vegas or Caesars Palace, having filmed The Hangover there, was on hand to introduce the first teaser trailer for Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix.
The chilling teaser, to be released widely on Wednesday, shows a pre-Joker Arthur Fleck, working as a clown on the street, helping his mother take a bath, possibly attempting to date and generally veering toward madness.
Phillips said there has been a lot written about the film and not much has been all that accurate.
“But that’s what happens when you set out to make an origin story about a character who doesn’t have an origin,” he said of Batman’s nemesis.
Plus, he would rather it be a surprise for audiences when it hits cinemas in October. He was even playing a little coy with his own studio, telling them he could not describe it.
When they asked for a genre, he said, “It’s a tragedy”.
The studio also showed the first trailer for The Goldfinch, an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Donna Tartt, about a boy mourning his mother’s death from director John Crowley.
“I hope that people find a piece of themselves in the story,” star Ansel Elgort said. “I hope that whatever drew people to that book draws them to the movie.” It hits cinemas in September.
Tiffany Haddish and Melissa McCarthy came out to promote something unexpected for the two comediennes — a ’70s-set mob drama called The Kitchen, from Straight Outta Compton writer Andrea Berloff in her directorial debut, which comes out in August.
“Everyone knows very strong women in challenging positions but you don’t often get to see that in film,” McCarthy said.
Haddish added that she was excited to be in a film like this.
“For me, this was a dream come true,” Haddish said. “I’m from South Central Los Angeles. I grew up around gangster-like stuff. I always tried to join the gangs but they wouldn’t let me, I was too goofy.”
There were glimpses of the star-studded Motherless Brooklyn adaptation from Edward Norton, a very brief look at Wonder Woman 1984 and even the Harley Quinn spinoff Birds of Prey, starring Margot Robbie.
Also on hand to promote the Warner Bros films were a hologram Pikachu – with the voice of Ryan Reynolds – a very real Helen Mirren who had one choice expletive to describe her feelings about Netflix, and McCarthy in a fire-breathing dragon costume.