Paramount Pictures opened its CinemaCon presentation with the best thing it put on stage all morning. John M. Chu’s opening short film looked gorgeous, moved with real purpose, and understood exactly what a studio reel should do. It sold Paramount as a place of movie stars, filmmakers, legacy IP, physical craft, and actual cinematic scale. Even the lot, soundstages, gear, and facilities felt mythic. Then it topped itself with the most visually loaded image of the whole presentation, Tom Cruise barefoot on top of the Paramount water tower like a living symbol of the studio’s surviving big-screen ambition. It was elegant, confident, and built with more care than much of what followed.
David Ellison Brought Bad Optics and Worse Timing
Then David Ellison walked out, and the room got weird. You could feel the discomfort. He used the stage to promise that, if Paramount and Warner Bros. combine, the merged company will release at least 30 films a year and give each one a minimum 45-day theatrical window. But the promise landed with a thud because it came from the same executive who skipped a Senate hearing on the merger, with Paramount citing a death in the family, only to appear publicly at CinemaCon days later.
On top of that, reports say Ellison is set to host a private dinner in Washington honoring Donald Trump as Paramount’s CBS operation still reels from the fallout of the “60 Minutes” lawsuit, the $16 million settlement, and newsroom exits tied to concerns over editorial independence. I do not need to pretend I can read his soul to say the optics stink. They do. Money and daddy let some people fail upward to absurd heights.
The Paramount Pictures Structure Kept Sabotaging Its Own Slate
The bigger problem, though, was the presentation itself. After that opening short, Paramount never found clean rhythm. The studio would mention several projects in one breath, then show clips in a different order, then sometimes roll footage for a movie that had not even been properly set up yet. Other times, someone would toss out one sentence and pivot into an unrelated trailer.
Even audience reaction felt like things went downhill after the opening sizzle and that the presentation kept awkwardly jumping between brief setups and random clips. That mess hurt projects that needed context, and it made the whole show feel lighter than the actual slate deserved. Especially compared to Warner Bros., which opened with Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu and kept a much clearer filmmaker-first flow, Paramount looked disorganized.
The Guest-Driven Segments Actually Worked
To Paramount’s credit, the projects with live talent were the ones that popped. Scary Movie came in loud, rude, and alive. The cast framed the return around the simple truth that comedy still works when people actually laugh together in a theater.
“We heard this rumor that rated comedies don’t work at the box office and we all thought that’s f****** b*******. So Paramount told us to do what we do best and send people exactly.”
- Scary Movie Cast
That got the room back. So did Street Fighter, which finally felt like Paramount Pictures understood how to sell spectacle with personality. The live bit, the wrestler energy, and the trailer’s 16-bit chaos all gave the adaptation some pulse. Even without perfect structure, Street Fighter felt like an event.
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Call of Duty also came with a clean, useful update. Pete Berg will direct, and he and Taylor Sheridan are writing it. Berg sold the film on authenticity first.
“Taylor and I were both very deeply connected to the special operations community. We want to make sure the authenticity of it is captured on a very human level. So that it feels very real.”
- Pete Berg
That gave the movie more shape than most of the Paramount Pictures reel-heavy reveals. The studio also confirmed Top Gun 3 is officially in development, with a script underway reuniting Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie. That alone is a big headline, even if Paramount weirdly treated it like one more item on a shopping list.
Children of Blood and Bone Deserved Better Placement in the Paramount Pictures Presentation
The other major bright spot was Children of Blood and Bone. It brought real wonder back into the room. The presentation sold it as spiritual, magical, intimate, and epic all at once.
“I wanted to make sure that Children of Blood and Bone because it’s everything that I love about cinema. I want to go to the movies to be awed, inspired, swept away. I want to be moved. This film is intimately epic, action packed, magical fun as hell, and unlike anything you guys have seen before.”
- Gina Prince-Bythewood
That is the kind of vision statement a studio should build around, not bury in the churn.
The Paramount Pictures presentation was not empty. It had real movies, real talent, and some genuinely exciting reveals. But it never found the structure or authority to make that slate feel as powerful as it should have. The opening short film understood cinematic grandeur. Too much of the actual presentation did not.
And when you stack that against WB’s cleaner, sharper, more controlled show, Paramount’s effort lands as a frustrating miss. As for Ellison, I am not going to pretend his actions read like those of a principled steward of journalism or cinema. Right now, they read like a billionaire chasing control while asking everyone else to trust the pitch.
Are you still sold on the Paramount Pictures slate despite the messy presentation? Did Scary Movie, Street Fighter, or Children of Blood and Bone save the morning for you? And how much did Ellison’s presence sour the whole thing? Share your thoughts in the comments or @me
KEEP READING: Warner Bros. CinemaCon Unleashes Tom Cruise, DC Surprises, and a Wild 2027 Slate
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