7 Things I Learned From CinemaCon 2017

Disney rules, Charlize kicks ass and everyone is talking in the wings about premium video on demand.

Here’s my takeaways on the state of theatrical moviegoing and the upcoming movies for the rest of this year from the annual gathering of theater exhibitors and Hollywood movie studios in Las Vegas.

Distribution chief Dave Hollis spent about 12 minutes walking through the upcoming movies — no, there was no taste of the new “Star Wars” movie coming in December — and then they showed a tolerable new “Pirates” movie “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” which no one seemed to love but may still make $1 billion.

STX is sizing down and living the harsh realities of building a modern-day movie studio from scratch.

[...] Read: STX Entertainment Struggles With Flops, Executive Exits and a Shift in Strategy (Exclusive)

Aaron Sorkin’s new drama starring Jessica Chastain, about the feisty Molly Bloom, who ran a high stakes poker game in Beverly Hills with a bunch of A-list movie stars until she got busted looks more to be a courtroom drama?

The standout movie  to me, made by STX, looks to be “The Foreigner,” an exciting action movie starring the inimitable Jackie Chan.

Also: did we mention Jim Gianopulos (who wasn’t there) is coming? The new plan is integrating all the Viacom brands together, and Paramount highlighted the planned integration with Nickelodeon.

The window for premium VOD — when you get to watch the movie at home for a hefty fee while it’s still in theaters — is somewhere in the middle of the birth canal, but it’s not born yet.

The Amazonian-like actress chops, cracks, stabs, slashes and shoots her way through a dozen bad guys in a dingy Eastern European stairwell, but in the process the actress is flung down a flight of stairs, gets tossed hard against a wall or three and is punched hard in the solar plexus.

Fox got feisty and remembered that movies are fun, opening its presentation with a lively set of dancers wearing electric lights in the dark, and closing with a rousing crowd of singers.

Too many of the studio presentations featured overly-peppy gal pals at the podium (looking at you Maria Menounos) or terrifyingly dull men in suits or exhaustingly long interviews with talent.