Boxoffice - April 2019

CINEMACON 2019
VEGAS SHOWMAN
CinemaCon, the annual convention of
the National Association of Theatre Owners,
is celebrating its ninth year, and from
the beginning, the man at the helm has
been Mitch Neuhauser. A veteran convention
organizer, Neuhauser has applied his
expertise to create a lively, informative,
and fun event that’s filled with star-studded
product presentations, networking
opportunities, valuable seminars, and a
bustling trade show.
>> So how will the CinemaCon experience be
different this year? “We’ve heard that our schedule
has been so jam-packed that it doesn’t allow
people enough breathing room to fully conduct
the amount of business that they want to do,
which not only includes meetings but also visiting
the trade show floor,” Neuhauser replies. “So this
year, our Wednesday lunch, rather than being a
sit-down lunch, is going to be an informal buffet
type of event with no formal programming. People
can come and go, and basically once the Universal
presentation ends on Wednesday morning, up
until the Disney presentation at 3:30 p.m., people
will have time to go to the trade show and do what
they want to do.
“As well, the Pioneers [whose annual awards
dinner has been a CinemaCon event in recent
years] will be moving to Los Angeles in 2019.
We’re excited for them, and we’re going to do
whatever we can to make sure that they have a very
successful event. So we have added a studio event
on Wednesday at 7:45 p.m.—we’re excited to have
a company like Amazon Studios taking center stage
in the Colosseum. They’re going to be screening
one of the outstanding features from this year’s
Sundance Film Festival, a movie called Late Night
starring Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson,
which Kaling also wrote.
“Let’s also address the fact that Sony Pictures
Entertainment is taking what I hope is ‘a gap year’
in 2019. We’re certainly hopeful that they’ll be
returning in 2020—I think all roads will point to
that direction. We love Sony, we respect them. People
make business decisions and you go with the
flow when they make decisions like that. But we’ve
MITCH NEUHAUSER
PROMISES ANOTHER
LIVELY CONVENTION
BY KEVIN LALLY
got a full complement of studio support.”
Neuhauser continues, “CinemaCon is all
about celebrating the moviegoing experience.
That’s what it was created to be and that’s what it
will continue to be. So we will keep people busy
from morning to night with great product and
events in the Colosseum. People have also asked
us to possibly incorporate some more screenings
into the schedule, and this year we may have
upwards of four. So in addition to Amazon Studios,
Lionsgate will be screening Long Shot with
Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen.” (At press time,
the Monday opening-night studio screening and
the Tuesday night studio screening titles had not
yet been announced.)
Once again, the trade show is sold out. Neuhauser
says motion-seating companies D-Box,
4DX, and MediaMation will all be highly visible,
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