CinemaCon: Lionsgate Brings Borderlands, Major Announcements, and More

On Wednesday morning, Lionsgate played host to a presentation of its upcoming film slate in the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace during 2024’s CinemaCon show. This followed Tuesday’s presentation from Crunchyroll and Warner Bros. with its “Big Picture” demonstration. Lionsgate covered Colosseum entrances with banners for the Borderlands movie imagery, indicating one of the studio’s biggest titles for the rest of the year would be a major focus in the presentation.

At 9:42am, the panel kicked off with a sizzle reel of previous Lionsgate titles. This included John Wick: Chapter 4, Joy Ride, Saw X, Hunger Games, and more. Upcoming titles showing footage include Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Borderlands, The Crow, and more. Michael P. O’Leary, President and Chief Executive Officer at the National Association of Theater Owners, took the stage to welcome Lionsgate into the Colosseum. 

Kevin Grayson, President of Worldwide Distribution at Lionsgate takes the stage. Grayson started by thanking the exhibitors in attendance for helping to make Lionsgate titles a success in 2023. New installments in existing franchises is a big focus, following up on recent installments to John Wick and Hunger Games. New properties are also important, with Chad Stahelski directing Highlander and Destin Daniel Cretton directing Naruto. No You See Me 3 will be rebuilt by Ruben Fleischer. Jason Blum is going to make a new Blair Witch movie.

In The Grey, January 17, 2025 will star Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonzalez, and Rosamund Pike. A preview is shown. Gyllenhaal is sat in a restauant with Gonzalez, reporting back to Cavill’s character who is in a car. They are aware of several threats around them. Gyllenhaal waves a finger t a man stepping to him, then uses a silenced pistol to take him and others out. A stylish trailer ut using cash as graphics for transitions, sees Cavill explain that they are facing an army essentially. It goes to several locations, from desserts to exotic cliffs. Gonzalez decalres, “We operate in the grey.” Helicopters, rockets, quads running in dirt, sleek offices, banter, all combined for style. 

Henry Cavill is asked about the upcoming Highlander movie he is making. “I’m a lover of the original movies, for better or for worse,” he said. “It’s one of those things where reading the script for the first time I wasn’t quite too sure where they;re gonna go with it but my goodness me… what they’re doingb with this…we are going deep into the meaning of these characters and they’re various trials and tribulations. If you thought you had seen me do sword work before, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Next up is The Strangers Chapter 1, hitting on May 16. It’s an origin story of how The Strangers came to be. A trailer is shown.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Kate Blanchet and Jack Black sent a video message to CinemaCon for Borderlands. The schtick of the video is Curtis talking the whole time while everyone tries to get a word in. A new trailer for Borderlands plays before director Eli Roth and star Ariana Greenblatt take the stage. 

“I love the game, I love big popcorn, sci-fi movies,” Roth said. He cites Alien and Fifth Element and Raiders of the Lost Ark as movies he loved watching and the sort of magic he wanted to recreate. “Some movies, you’re just pushing this boulder up the hill and there’s nothing you can do,” he said. That wasn’t the case for this one. He easily got Blanchett on board, followed by Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Ariana Greenblatt.

“I feel like I’ve just been so fortunate and luck to have been on the journey that I’ve been on,” Greenblatt said. “It blew my mind. To this day, I see the poster and I’m like, ‘Wow. Wow, wow, wow.’” She notes how the Borderlands crew became a family. “I genuinely just looked around at everyone I spend however many months with..,and it just came from happy tears.” 

Next up is The Crow, arriving August 23. a new trailer for the film plays. 

Next up is Never Let Go, arriving September 27. It’s a film starring Halle Berry and loaded with jump scares. Berry’s character is the mother to two young boys living in a cabin in the woods, surrounded by mutated humans and psychological threats. The question of whether or not the world is still out there for them is presented by the kids.

Halle Berry takes the stage to talk about the film. “This gave me an opportunity to be a part of a world that I had never seen before,:” Berry said. “A mother and two children that were in such a unique environment…these boys have never left the house in which they were brorn in and there’s nothing there but the woods…right away, it was a creepy environment, something I’d never seen before, and I was challenged by, ‘What would it be like?’…My character is skinning squirrels and eating frogs, raw frogs from the woods…I had to really skin a squirrel! These things wildly challenged me.”

Berry compliments her director, Alex Aja, for his ability to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. “The world, yes, is very foreign to me,” Berry said. “But what draws me is being a mother. Since I became a mother, 16 years ago, playing these kinds of roles have wildly excited me. I know what it is to be a mother now…I would protect my children with my life. We often say, ‘I’d take a bullet for my kids.’ Would you take a knife for your kids?…This role gave me an opportunity to really take that to the limit, how far you would go to protect your kids.”

Next is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, from director Dallas Jenkins, arriving November 8. 

The Killer’s Game stars Dave Bautista, Sofia Boutella, Pom Klementieff, Ben Kingsley, and more. A trailer sees Bautista as a hitman, dating Boutella’s character and explaining he works in “retirement planning.” Bautista is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Klementieff offers jobs to the hitman world, with Bautista asking her to put a hit on him so he doesn’t have to die slowly from the cancer. Bautista later gets a call from the doctor, learning they made a mistake. It’s too late to call off the hit, so he has to fight off all of the the other hitmen. He comes clean about his work to Boutella, all intercut with him kicking ass in stylish ways.

Mark Wahlberg sent the first trailer for Flight Risk, listed as “coming soon.” The movie sees Wahlberg as a hitman who took out a pilot on a small plane transporting a criminal. He is found out, which derails the trip and puts everyone at risk. He doesn’t seem to care at all if the plane crashes.

Shadow Force is next. The film sees two characters, formerly of a shadow force with a rule that no one leaves, being hunted by the force they were once a part of. 

Next is Good Fortune, starring Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keanu Reeves, and Keke Palmer. The movie sees Ansari’s character swap places with Rogen’s with Ansari’s coming from very little financial and Rogen’s being a well-off Los Angeles guy. Ansari enjoys the life in good fortune and doesn’t want to go back to his own, prompting Reeves to lose his angel wings for not properly teaching Ansari the lesson. 

Ansari takes the stage and cooks Lionsgate with humor about making so many movies with Henry Cavill and jokes that they call him “little brown Cavill.” He wrote and directed the film. A photo from the set of Good Fortune of Reeves on crutches with bandages on hits the screen, with Reeves actually getting injured on set. “15 days into shooting with me, I was like, ‘Hey go chill in your dressing room,’” which lead to Reeves slipping and fracturing his knee cap. They still filmed everything for the movie except a salsa dancing scene, so far. 

Next is Ballerina, arriving June 6, 2025. “It’s set between the events between the events of 3 & 4,” is confirmed. The film is adding “significant set pieces” to make it a full-on John Wick quality movie. The teaser play. The Ballerina is dancing, training, shooting, fighting, and seeking vengeance upon those who harmed her. She has tattoos across her back. Lance Reddick’s Charone welcomes her to The Continental. Winston says it is “a pleasure to see” her again. Norman Reedus tells her she has no idea what she just walkerd into. A gang is after her but gets torched in hand to hand combat and lkiterally by flamethrowers. John Wick gets off of a train, shhe says, “you are him, the Baba Yaga,” and she wants to know how do start doing what he does. “Looks like you already have,” he tells her.

Graham King takes the stage to discuss Michael. “Characters that are multidimensional and complex,” are what he is drawn to, “and then I try to find the untold version of the story.” Michael Jackson checks all those boxes for him. He wanted to represent an “authentic” biopic of the pop star. He claims to have found the perfect star to embody Michael Jackson. He introduces the first look at the movie with a “Now in production” teaser.