'Spider-Man,' 'Blade Runner' footage kicks off CinemaCon

The annual gathering of theatre owners, exhibitors and Hollywood studios kicked off Monday evening at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas with Sony Pictures' presentation of their upcoming slate, featuring new looks at everything from "Blade Runner 2049" and "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" to the Stephen King adaptation "The Dark Tower." The studio also announced that they were bumping up the release of Edgar Wright's "Baby Driver" to June 28 from its planned August release.

Ryan Gosling was on hand to preview the "Blade Runner 2049" trailer in advance of its Oct. 6 release. The sequel to Ridley Scott's seminal 1982 dystopian Los Angeles epic picks up with a new cop, Gosling's Officer K, on a mission and looking for advice from Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard.

"I had your job once," Ford says in the trailer. "I was good at it."

Director Denis Villeneuve's vision was dark and stylized, and very much in the vein of Scott's film. It's not, as Sony Chairman Tom Rothman noted. However, little was revealed about the secretive plot which is said to expand the mythology and continue the story.

Rothman spoke nostalgically of the power of seeing "Blade Runner."

"I saw the future, of man and movies both," Rothman said. "Like millions around the world, I longed for more ever since."

You might be interested in

{{type}}

{{title}}

• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

{{type}}

{{title}}

• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

Gosling, who was only 2 when the original came out, remembers seeing the film when he was 13 or 14.

"I saw everything that stole from it first," the actor said. "I was just blown away by how influential this film had been, not only in film but in my reality as well."

The studio also previewed a first look at "The Dark Tower," out July 28, an adaptation of Stephen King's seminal saga starring Idris Elba as Roland the Gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black. The gritty fantasy takes audiences from the real world where a young boy, Jake (Tom Taylor), has visions of the Tower and the Gunslinger before sliding through a portal to another reality.

Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black were on site as well to tease "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," a sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams pic about a board game that gets a little too real. The film, set in the present day, takes everyday high school students into a body swapping situation with the characters in the game (i.e. the nerdy kid in the game becomes Dwayne Johnson and the beautiful popular girl becomes Jack Black).

"We wanted to make a movie that was not only phenomenal, not only paid homage to the original, but something that had evolved, something that could be global, something that could be fun," Johnson said. He remembered meeting the late Robin Williams at CinemaCon years ago and being too nervous to talk to him.

"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" hits theatres on Dec. 22.

As with every year at the annual convention, the sanctity of the theatrical experience was paramount, with everyone from studio executives to the filmmakers stressing to the audience that their movies are ones that will attract audiences to the cinema.

"Netflix, my ass," Rothman said after the "Blade Runner 2049" footage showed — the first but likely not the last of the jabs at streaming services threatening to upend the theatrical model. As the annual convention gets underway, there are talks of negotiations between studios and exhibitors to experiment with shortened theatrical windows that could allow consumers to purchase films for $30 to $50 within 30 to 40 days of release.

CinemaCon runs through Thursday.

---

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

By Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press