“The future is Paramount, and the future looks pretty great from here,” declared a barefoot Tom Cruise, seated atop the water tower on the studio’s lot in Hollywood.
The statement on Thursday was the conclusion of a slickly produced short movie that introduced Paramount’s first theatrical slate since the tech scion David Ellison took control of the studio in August.
The film — and a surprise appearance by Mr. Ellison at the presentation — was part of an effort to convey that Paramount Pictures is a friend to the movie community, which has been skeptical of its $111 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word once we combine with Warner Bros., we are going to make a minimum of 30 films across both studios,” Mr. Ellison said to an auditorium of thousands of theater owners at CinemaCon, an annual movie theater convention in Las Vegas.
He called the theatrical model “smart business” and added that Paramount had increased its number of releases to 15 films this year, from eight in 2025. He also promised that new Paramount films would stay in theaters exclusively for at least 45 days and would not appear on the company’s streaming service for 90 days after the start of the theatrical release, a strategy that most theater owners believe helps improve box office grosses.
In addition to the remarks from Mr. Ellison, the new co-chiefs of Paramount Pictures, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, introduced their plans. The lineup is heavy on franchise films and remakes, with a sprinkle of new projects that are still in the early stages of development, including a sequel to “Top Gun: Maverick.”
There will be a lot of familiar titles from Paramount for the remainder of 2026, including a new “Scary Movie,” a final “Jackass” film, more “Paw Patrol” and another “Angry Birds.” Next year will see another “Sonic the Hedgehog,” more “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and another “Quiet Place.”
As part of a deal the new Paramount leaders struck with Activision, a “Call of Duty” film will be hitting theaters in June 2028, directed by Peter Berg. And “Street Fighter,” another film based on a video game, will debut this year as part of a deal that Paramount signed with the production company Legendary Entertainment in September.
“Heart of the Beast,” starring Brad Pitt and a dog, will debut at year’s end, along with a sports story called “Mr. Irrelevant,” starring David Corenswet as the National Football League player John Tuggle. Only two of the clips shown seemed to be films geared toward a female audience, including a Billie Eilish concert film that will open next month and “Children of Blood and Bone,” an adaptation of the best-selling novel starring Viola Davis, Chiwetel Ejiofor and others, set to debut in early 2027.
“We know Paramount’s best days are still ahead because, in our eight months at the studio, we have already begun assembling an unparalleled family of talent,” Mr. Greenstein said.
Despite the showy presentation — Paramount’s opening promotional film was directed by Jon M. Chu of “Wicked” and featured a slew of high-wattage stars including Timothée Chalamet, John Krasinski and Teyana Taylor — theater owners at the conference seemed anxious about its merger with Warner Bros.
Though Mr. Ellison is assuring theater owners about the volume of movies he intends to release, they say Disney made similar promises when it acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019 only to reduce the once mighty studio to a label that releases around six films a year.
Others in Hollywood have also begun to speak up. On Monday, 1,000 well-known industry players, including the directors David Fincher, Denis Villeneuve and J.J. Abrams, published a letter opposing the merger over concern that it will further harm Hollywood’s distressed industry. By Wednesday, the number of signatures had risen to 3,000.
Warner Bros. presented its slate of films to theater owners earlier this week. The co-chairs of the motion picture group, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, didn’t utter the word merger in their nearly three-hour presentation. But the sheer volume of movies they promoted into 2028 and beyond felt to some attendees like a swan song.
Not everyone at CinemaCon seemed concerned about the pending merger. Adam Aron, the chairman and chief executive of AMC Entertainment, the country’s largest theater operator, endorsed the combination, writing in a statement on Thursday that he found Mr. Ellison’s pledges about the new releases to be “sincere.”
“Each of these developments is a significant improvement to what has been the case in recent years, where fewer movies were made and that they left theaters more quickly,” he wrote.
Nicole Sperling covers Hollywood and the streaming industry. She has been a reporter for more than two decades.
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